Get  Thee  Behind  Me,  Satan !  is  the  somewhat  start- 
ling title  of  Olive  Logan's  new  book,  published  by 
Adams,  Victor  &  Co.  It  claims  to  be  a  "Home-Born 
Book  of  Home  Truths,"  and  it  contains  enough  of 
strong,  sweet  truth  to  well  justify  the  claim.  Vigor  ol 
style  is  its  chief  characteristic.  A  brave,  true  spirit 
sanctifies  the  whole.  It,  however,  teems  with  exam- 
ples of  bad  taste,  for  which  its  author  has  become 
somewhat  noted.  Some  of  the  earlier  chapters— indeed 
all  that  treat  of  free  love— have  a  fiercely  passionate 
tone  that  rather  diminishes  than  increases  their  force. 
There  is,  throughout,  a  sugary  suggestion  of  the 
honeymoon,  under  whose  cheerful  rays  the  book  has 
been  written.  Some  women  who  love  their  homes 
and  their  husbands  as  well  as  Mrs.  Wirt  Sikes  does 
hers  will  doubtless  be  so  fastidious  as  to  feel  it  a  lit- 
tle desecration  of  the  holy  privacy  of  both  those 
blessings — particularly  the  latter — to  introduce  them 
with  such  fulsome  prominence  into  a  book.  It  is  no  , 
i  harm  to  the  book,  perhaps — but  isn't  it  unpleasant  for 
home  and  husband  ?  There  are  healthy  spasms  of 
strong  sense  on  every  page,  and  a  fund  of  anecdote 
so  apt  and  vividly  truthful  as  to  chain  attention.  It  is  a 
volume  that  should  put  new  life  into  every  girl-heart, 
and  it  gives  the  only  sure  panacea  lor  "back-ache," 
the  standard  misery  of  young  women  of  the  present 
j  generation. 


fU  5X4//T"- 

dxfa: 


GET  THEE 
BEHIND  ME,  SATAN 


A    HOME-BORN   BOOK.  OF  HOME-TRUTHS. 


OLIVE  LOGAN 

(MRS.  WIRT  SIKES), 

AUTHOR   OF    "CHATEAU   FRISSAC,"   "PHOTOGRAPHS   OF   PARIS   LIFE,' 
"WOMEN  AND  THEATRES,"  "THE  MIMIC  WORLD,"  ETC. 


NEW  YORK : 

ADAMS,  VICTOR  &  CO., 

98  WILLIAM  STREET. 

1872. 


Filtered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1872,  by 

ADAMS,  VICTOR  &  CO., 
In  the  Office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress,  at  Washington. 


POOI.E  &  MACLAUCHLAN,  PRINTERS, 

205-213  East  Twelfth  Street, 

NEW  YORK. 


To  MY  BEST  FRIEND, 

MY  COMPANION  AND  GUIDE, 

MY  HUSBAND. 


INTRODUCTION. 


IT  seems  to  me  that  there  is  a  useful  career,  just 
at  this  moment,  for  a  woman-book  which  shall 
breathe  the  spirit  of  true  love,  and  the  sweet  sancti- 
ties which  grow  out  of  Christian  marriage  :  A  book 
which  shall  stand  for  the  progressive  and  liberal 
women  of  our  day,  who  love  home  and  hate  the 
abominable  doctrines  which  have  distracted  and 
broken  our  ranks  :  A  book  which  shall  speak  for  the 
good  and  the  true,  and  indicate  the  right  paths  of 
usefulness,  duty,  and  achievement,  and  which  shall 
strike  home  upon  the  loose  principles  that  certainly 
are  gaining  ground  respecting  marriage  and  home 
life. 

With  regard  to  home  and  love — sweetness  and 
light ;  our  sunny  parlor ;  our  cheerful  hearth  ;  the 
circle  of  loved  ones  there. 

With  regard  to  progressive  ideas — purity,  truth, 
and  woman's  honor  before  everything. 

With  regard  to  all  forms  of  error,  whether  merely 
false  and  feeble,  or  strongly  gross  and  licentious — 
"  Get  thee  behind  me,  Satan  ! " 


GET  THEE  BEHIND  ME,  SATAN ! 


I. 

DOES  the  poem  about  "The  Old  Oaken 
Bucket  "  strike  you  as  sickly  sentimentality  ? 

"  Utterly  puerile,  such  a  poem,"  I  once  heard 
a  critic  say;  "  what  deeper  expressions  of  love, 
what  fonder  outpourings  of  the  heart  could  the 
poet  have  lavished  on  a  human  being,  than  he 
does  on  this  sloppy,  old,  verdigrisy,  dilapidated 
wooden  pail  ?  " 

I  never  loved  a  bucket  ;  yet  I  acknowledge 
that  I  am  uncommonly  fond  of  a  Table. 

This  particular  one  Husband  bought  at  second 
hand  for  five  dollars — years  ago,  when  he  was  a 
struggling  young  author,  and  was  fitting  up  a 
sanctum  down-town.  It  is  a  large  oval  table, 
covered  with  black  leather — so  large  indeed  that 
it  was  never  carried  in  at  any  door,  but  adopts 
a  sort  of  locomotion  of  its  own  and  rolls  in  ; 


8  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

and  it  filled  Husband's  little  sanctum  so  full  that 
there  was  hardly  room  for  anything  else.  After 
divers  vicissitudes  (there's  a  romantic  history 
coeval  with  the  ups  and  downs  of  that  table,  but 
I  am  not  the  one  to  tell  it — no,  Husband  must  tell 
you  that),  the  old  table  has  found  its  way  into  our 
dining-room,  and  we  have  eaten  our  meals  off 
it  ever  since  we  bought  our  new  house. 

What  I  like  most  particularly  about  the  table 
is  that  it  is  as  solid  as  a  rock.  That  is  to  say,  it 
doesn't  shake  when  everybody  leans  on  it. 

We  have  written  books,  on  it,  sewed  on  it,  iron- 
ed on  it ;  cut  patterns  on  it,  answered  letters  on  it, 
played  games  on  it ;  held  a  fancy  fair  on  it ;  mar- 
ried a  couple  in  front  of  it.  Somehow,  every- 
thing that  has  to  be  done  in  the  house  gets  done 
on  that  table.  If  any  one  sends  us  flowers,  be 
sure  they  go  on  the  table  ;  if  a  new  book  is  pre- 
sented or  bought,  "lay  it  on  the  table."  It 
changes  its  character  with  the  hours  ;  it  is  now  a 
table  of  ceremony,  now  a  dining-table,  now  a 
work-bench  ;  the  bird-cage  is  cleaned  on  the 
table ;  the  porcelain  tea-set  is  washed  on  the 

Itl  O  J  C     |      loots  have  been  blacked  on  the  table. 

If  it  had  been  possible  to  take  the  table  out 
walking  with  us,  there  is  no  question  but  its 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  9 

four  legs  would  have  had  many  a  stretching  at 
Central  Park  of  a  sunny  afternoon.  We  would 
have  it  always  with  us  if  we  could.  It  is  one  of 
our  dearest  friends. 

And  observe,  that,  though  there  are  at  least 
a  dozen  other  tables  in  the  house,  this  alone  is 
The  Table.  In  the  front  parlor  is  a  buhl  table 
worth  as  many  dollars  as  Husband  paid  cents  for 
The  Table.  The  buhl  table  came  from  Paris, 
and  was  once  in  the  palace  of  Versailles.  You 
know  how  beautiful  the  buhl  work  is  ? — solid 
brass  inlaid  with  tortoise-shell.  This  has  four 
busts  in  brass  of  Marie  Antoinette  placed  at 
each  leg  —  perfect  likenesses  of  this  unhappy 
Queen,  about  as  large  as  my  hand.  It  is  a 
gorgeous  piece  of  furniture,  which  rivets  the 
attention  of  a  stranger  the  moment  he  enters  the 
room.  In  the  back  parlor  is  a  little  gem  of  a 
table  made  of  ebony  and  polished  so  highly  you 
can  see  yourself  reflected  in  it  as  you  look  at  the 
delicate  flowers  inlaid  in  the  top.  This  also 
came  from  one  of  the  French  palaces,  and  has 
thin  aristocratic  legs,  and  folding  leaves  that  are 
so  bewilderingly  pretty  that  when  they  are  up 
you  think  they  look  better  so,  and  when  they 
are  down  you  decidedly  prefer  them  so.  Per- 


io  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

haps  you  will  wonder  that  these  beautiful 
articles  should  be  in  the  possession  of  such 
mere  democratic  persons  as  ourselves.  But  you 
will  remember  that  the  war  between  France  and 
Germany  threw  many  choice  objects  in  the  way 
of  cultured  purchasers,  and  we  have  friends  in 
Paris.  Besides  these  foreign  tables,  there  is  a 
long  list  of  other  tables,  one  for  every  room,  of 
course  -  -  ending  with  Norah's  table,  which 
Husband  chopped  out  of  the  pine  box  in  which 
the  buhl  table  came  across  ocean,  and  which 
he  nailed  together  so  skilfully  that  Norah  was 
in  ecstasies  over  it,  and  when  he  tacked  it  all 
over  with  green  cambric  and  brass-headed  tacks, 
Norah  drew  in  her  breath  and  rolled  up  her 
eyes  and  vowed  that  she  liked  it  "  better  than 
the  brass  Bull  in  the  parlor  ! " 

Husband  does  marvels  with  his  tool-box,  by 
the  way.  Having  been  reared  with  a  pen  in 
his  fingers,  he  naturally  finds  a  tool-box  as 
fascinating  as  a  puzzle.  He  goes  at  things  with 
his  hammer  and  nails  on  the  slightest  provoca- 
tion, and  if  there  is  anything  he  can  find  to  do 
with  the  screw-driver  he  is  happy.  He  has 
mended  the  old  sanctum  rocking-chair  so  many 
times  that  it  is  a  sight  to  behold.  He  finds  a 


Get   TJiee  behind  Me,  Satan  /  1 1 

sort  of  comfort  in'  having  things  get  out  of 
order  about  the  house,  so  he  can  go  and  tinker 
at  them. 

/  Around  The  Table  we  gather  in  the  evening. 
Husband  and  I,  dear  sisters,  children,  friends ; 
puss  and  servants  in  the  background  ;  two 
good  gas-burners  over  our  heads  ;  our  books, 
our  games,  our  needlework,  our  newspapers  ; — 
oh,  Cosiness,  thou  dwellest  in  the  Table. 

Sometimes  it  is  a  round  game — parcheesi,  Dr. 

^  Busby,  Muggins,  Lots.  Sometimes  it  is  a 
rebus  to  be  guessed,  and  all  work  at  it.  Some- 
times Husband  contributes  an  original  poem,  or 
furnishes  a  humorous  conundrum  ;  and  frequent- 
ly our  Algie  becomes  our  instructor,  and  tells 
us  strange  facts  about  fish  or  birds  on  which  a 
learned  Professor  has  this  day  lectured  the  boys 
at  school.  It  often  happens,  too,  that  we  hear 
him  recite  his  lessons  ;  and  then  we  look  at  the 
youngster  with  admiring  awe,  as  he  rattles  off 
names  of  rivers  in  China  and  mountains  in  Japan 
of  whose  existence  we  were  profoundly  ignorant. 
Reader,  have  you  a  Table  ?  No  ? 

(Then  haste  to  get  one  ;  for,  by  my  faith,  a 
Table  and  your  soul's  salvation  are  nearer  allied 
than  you  may  think. 


12  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

Why,  reflect — putting  yourself  aside — upon 
these  sweet  boys  and  girls,  now  sitting  around, 
swinging  their  legs  and  kicking  sportively  the 
legs  of  the  Table, — which  bears  it  meekly  and 
does  not  so  much  as  even  shake  in  return, — how\ 
/  dear  to  them  in  future  years  may  be  the  memo-  1 
\^  ry  of  these  guiltless  hours  passed  around  the 
Table  !     What  a  sword  and  shield  against  the 
hot  and  burning  temptations  of  Tableless  after- 
years  ! 

Our  boy  Algie — or  your  boy,  say — grows  to 
manhood,  launches  into  business — boot  and  shoe 
man  makes  him  tempting  offers — "wholesale 
trade,  San  Francisco,  big  thing" — he  enters 
the  wholesale  trade,  he  goes  to  San  Francisco, 
he  puts  to  the  test  the  bigness  of  the  thing  ;  it; 
is  smaller  than  he  expected  ;  the  boy  is  lonely, 
is  tempted,  his  beautiful  face  gains  him  wicked 
flatterers,  his  good  counsellors  are  far  away,  the 
gilded  palaces  of  San  Francisco  glitter  in  the 
eyes  of  nineteen,  he  enters  "just  to  see;"  a 
glass  goes  to  his  lips,  he  is  about  to  take  a  drink, 
(i  his  FIRST,  when  suddenly  the  phantom  of  The 
Table  rises  before  him,  he  dashes  the  cup  to 
earth  and  flies ! 

Excuse   me,   if  in  my  excitement  over  this 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  13 

picture,  I  adopt  the  language  of  the  temperance 
lecturer. 

The  truth  is,  Algie — typifying  our  boy  or 
your  boy — puts  the  glass  down  gently  so  as  not 
to  attract  attention,  whistles  softly  in  an  off-hand 
manner  and  then  goes  quietly  out. 

But  he  is  saved,  all  the  same  ;  and  the  Table\ 
did  it. 

Or  our  girl — or  yours ;  in  a  few  years  she 
will  be  a  woman.  We  cannot  always  stay  by 
her  ;  she  will  have  to  meet  and  battle,  with  the 
world  as  we  have  done.  She  is  already  greatly 
impressed  with  the  idea  of  a  larger  sphere  of 
-'usefulness  for  woman.  Will  it  ever  be  her  fate  I 
/  to  fall  into  thehands  of  those  ^emissaries  of  Satan/ 
who  call  themselves  Free-lovers  ?  Will  the  spe- 
cious doctrine  ever  be  poured  in  her  young  ears 
('  by  oily  Mephistophelian  women,  until,  carried  ] 
away  by  it  and  the  passions  of  youth,  she  is  on 
the  point  of  falling  ?  Why,  let  but  her  memory 
not  die  within  her  brain,  and  I  will  risk  herx 
Satanesses,  even  in  your  toils  !  The  recollection 
of  The  Table,  the  knowledge  of  the  horror  your 
doctrines  inspire  in  the  breasts  of  those  who  sat 
around  it,  will  carry  her  pure  through  an  ordeal 
even  as  fiery  as  yours. 


14  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

Thus  it  may  happen  that  a  second-hand  five- 
dollar  table,  animated  by  love,  vivified  by  sym- 
pathy, humanized  by  daily  contact,  may  have 
the  power  to  save  a  living  soul. 


II. 

AROUND  our  Table  we  strive  to  be  all  children 
together.  Why  is  it  that  grown  people  gene- 
rally consider  their  own  physical  and  moral  alti- 
tude so  much  above  that  of  children,  that  when 
they  try  to  unbend  they  do  it  about  as  gracefully 
as  an  elephant  who  folds  his  flabby  legs  beneath 
him  and  dumps  himself  down  to  receive  his 
castle  ? 

I  have  seen  a  sin-ridden  man  behave  with 
such  haughty  contempt  to  a  little  girl — merely 
'  because  she  was  a  child — that  for  a  moment  his 
presumption  might  almost  have  caused  you  to 
lose  sight 'of  the  palpable  truth — that  the  little 
girl,  being  a  late  telegram  from  the  kingdom  of 
Heaven,  was  a  thousand  times  more  valuable 
than  the  man,  a  worthless  express  package, 
labelled  C.  O.  D.  for  Satan. 

I  have  seen  a  father  come  home  from  work, 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  15 

and  finding  his  daughter  sitting  in  his  favorite 
chair,  cry  out  in  a  rough  voice — "  Here  !  here  ! 
get  out  of  that !  What  are  you  doing  in  my 
chair  ?"  As  if  he  thought  a  piece  of  furniture 
so  honored  as  to  be  sat  on  by  so  mighty  a 
potentate  as  himself  should  never,  even  in  his 
absence,  be  defiled  by  furnishing  support  to 
any  small  person. 

Is  not  "  My  dear,  let  Papa  have  his  chair,"  as 
easy  of  utterance  as  "Be  off  with  you  ?  " 

What  linguistic  difficulties  stand  in  the  way 
of  "  Daughter,  will  you  be  good  enough  to 
bring  me  my  slippers  ? "  And  where  is  the 
child  whose  eye  will  not  brighten,  whose  cheeks 
will  not  flush  with  pleasure  at  the  knowledge 
that  she  is  her  father's  own  little  friend,  "her 
Papa's  girl  ?  '.' 

I  once  dwelt  in  a  family  where  there  was  a 
Father  who  had  six  daughters.  Think  what  a 
clan  !  But  he  loved  them  every  one.  Each,  to 
him,  even  in  earliest  childhood,  had  a  distinct 
character ;  One  was  classic  and  majestic  ;  one, 
a  great  reader  ;  one,  thoughtful  and  inquiring 
("  wish  you  had  a  dictionary  slung  around  your 
neck,"  said  her  brother  Bill,  "so  you  wouldn't 
be  forever  asking  me  what  words  mean  ")  ;  a 


1 6  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

fourth  was  the  family  beauty  ;  a  fifth  was  musi- 
cal ;  the  sixth,  the  cunning  little  baby — born  in 
a  disastrous  cholera  season  ;  therefore  when  she 
squalled  the  girls  pronounced  her  "  choleric." 

And  this  father,  poet,  scholar,  great  traveller  ; 
of  whom  we  fully  believed  the  neighborhood 
stood  in  awe  for  his  learning  ;  whom  the  great 
magazines  of  both  continents  courted  for  their 
pages ;  was  a  courteous  gentleman  to  his  ) 
(youngest  baby. 

.  This  tells  heavily,  in  the  time  to  come.      You 

/may  not  care  for  this  baby-critic  while   she  is 

/  still  a  baby — but  the  day  may  come  when  she 

i    will  be  a  baby  no  longer,  and  her  opinion  of 

you  will  have  been  formed  in  that  very  infantile 

\  period  for  which  you  had  such  contempt. 

A  child's  mind  is  limited  in  its  objects.      It 

/    has    not   pored  over  books  ;  it  is  ignorant  of 

Latin  ;  but  it  knows  if  a  blade  of  grass  springs 

up  between  the  bricks  in  the  yard,  and  can  tell 

where  the  tacks  are  placed  which  hold  down  the 

carpet.     A   fly's  eye    sees  a  narrow  territory, 

but  it  knows  that  territory  with  a  minuteness 

that  would  astonish  you  in  spite  of  your  great 

goggles,  many  times  bigger  than  its  whole  body. 

PThus   does  your  child — girl  or  boy — see  little 


•*  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  17 

traits   in  you,  good  and  bad,  which  you    and\ 
other  grown  persons  overlook,  being  occupied 
with  your  larger  fields  of  observation  and  critiv 
cism. 

This  home  of  ours  is  built  up  on  love.  Every 
room  is  full  of  it.  It  sings  in  the  songs  of  our 
bird,  it  perfumes  us  through  the  odor  of  our 
flowers  ;  the  very  cat  mews  it  ;  the  tea-kettle 
hums  it ;  every  inanimate  thing  cries  it  with  a 
voice  as  ringing  as  an  angel's  tongue. 

At  risk  of  seeing  a  smile  curl  the  lip  of  yon  \ 
cynic  reader,  I  will  tell  you  that  many  and 
many  a  time  we  gather  around  our  old  Table, 
set  for  a  meal,  and  reach  out  and  grasp  each 
other's  hands  as  we  sit,  in  pure  gush  of  simple 
affection  for  each  other,  and  thankfulness  to 
God  for  giving  us  our  home.  Not  one  cloud 
mars  the  harmony  of  that  group.  We  have  all 
known  sorrow  keenly  ;  it  is  that,  perhaps,  which 
enables  us  so  fully  to  appreciate  the  worth  of 
that  which  we  enjoy.  And  it  is  our  unanimous 
verdict  that  nothing  in  this  world,  so  far  as  we 
know  (and  our  travels  have  been  over  weary 
miles,  and  in  many  countries),  nothing  can 
equal  the  satisfaction  of  true  heart's  love,  and 
true  heart's  home. 


1 8  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  * 

Not  all  the  romances  that:  were  ever  written, 
not  all  the  love-songs  that  were  ever  sung, 
could  give  the  mere  curious  inquirer  one  gleam 
of  knowledge  of  the  perfect  joy  which  marriage 
brings  to  the  wedded  couple  who  sit  daily  at 
our  Table.  Oh,  the  radiant  beauty  of  that 
rare,  rich  love  !  How  it  shines  and  glows  ! 
How  it  warms  every  heart  that  comes  near  it, 
and  beholds  its  pure,  white  flame  !  I  would  if  I 
could  put  the  love-life  of  these  people  on  a  ped- 
estal, and  turn  upon  it  the  blaze  of  a  moral 
calcium  light,  that  all  the  world  might  look 
upon  it  and  behold  its  beauty,  and  see  how  its 
glorious  effulgence  flings  into  deepest  shadow 
the  black  and  iniquitous  structures  called  Free- 
love,  Mormonism,  and  the  like. 

This  husband  and  this  wife  are  true  heart- 
twins.  Their  eve/y  sentiment  is  in  common. 
Every  desire  of  the  one  is  a  heart-craving  to  be 
met  and  humored  by  the  other.  They  have 
scarcely  need  of  words  to  communicate  what 
they  feel  ;  to  look  in  each  other's  eyes  is  to 
read  the  secret  of  each  other's  souls.  The  lan- 
guage they  speak  with  their  eyes  is  deeper, 

i  richer,  stronger  than  any  words  which  ever  yet 

i  were  framed  by  mortal  lips. 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  19 

We  know  that  this  marriage  was  made  in 
heaven.  Every  member  of  our  little  household 
can  see  that  the  golden  links  were  riveted  by 
angels.  Yet  it  was  born  of  mutual  sorrow. 
Iron  is  united  by  the  fiercest  flame.  With  torn 
and  bleeding  hearts,  half  their  span  of  years 
gone,  this  man  and  this  woman  joined  hands 
and  said,  "  Until  Death  us  do  part." 

Knowing  that  the   sad   day  must  come  when 
Death  .y/2#//part  them,  they  hold  every  day  that 
dawns  upon  them  a  blessed  privilege  of  com- 
panionship.      More  precious  than  any  molten 
(gold  is  their  association.      Marred   by  no  strife,  \ 
dimmed  by  no  jealousies,   purer  than  anything/ 
else  on  earth  is  such  a  love  as  this.     And  they 
know,  t5o,  that  their  separation  will  be  but  for 
a   time.     What  God  hath  joined  together,  He 
will  not  put  asunder. 

We  have  no  gloomy  beliefs,   at  our  house. 
We  do  not  think  of  Heaven  as  a  dreadful,  far-off 
abstraction,  but  as  a  cheerful  and  cheering  re- 
ality.    We   believe  our  home-circle  will   be  a 
',  most  happy  one,  Up  There. 

Sister  Rebecca  has  had  to  part  with  her  heart- 
twin — Dick,  her  Dick,  her  brave,  hearty,  strong 
noble-minded  Dick,  stricken  down  by  Southern 


2O  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

fever-heats  in  the  prime  of  his  manhood.  Dick 
waits  for  her  in  heaven.  She  knows  she  shall 
meet  him.  She  lingers  a  little,  by  God's 
will,  here.  She  speaks  of  him  so  often 
and  in  such  bright  and  happy  tones  that  a 
stranger  would  think  he  were  alive,  and  might 
come  in  and  take  his  seat  at  our  Table  any  min- 
ute. Dick's  picture,  daintily  framed,  stands  on 
the  buffet  on  Rebecca's  left  hand  ;  the  hand  of 
her  wedding  ring,  the  side  of  her  heart.  "  This 
is  Dick's,"  she  says  of  his  belongings,  as  if  he 
had  them  in  daily  use.  "  My  pillow  bears  the 
imprint  of  Dick's  head,"  she  said  one  day  as 
she  was  putting  on  a  clean  pillow-slip,  "he 
always  oiled  his  hair."  This  without  any  of 
that  gaunt  horror,  or  sentimental  glotfm,  that 
most  people  have  regarding  the  articles  the  dead 
have  used.  She  patted  the  pillow  tenderly,  and 
looked  at  it  with  a  fond  smile  as  if  she  saw 
there  the  beloved  face  once  more. 


III. 

I    MARVEL    sometimes   at   the    presumption 
which   made   the    inventors   of    the   licentious\ 
thing  fix  upon  the  name  "  free  love  "  for  their 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  21 

abomination.     It  is  precisely  like  the  perform- 
ance of  the  quack  doctor  who  compounds  some 
disgusting  and    poisonous   draught  and  blazes 
it  on  fences  and  dead  walls  as  "  Elixir  of  Life." 
f    The  only  freedom  love  knows  is  the  freedom) 
[of  marriage.     It  is  common  in  these  degenerate 
days  to  speak  contemptuously  of  the  bonds  of 
marriage.     By  the  way,  that  is  a  law  term,  is  it 
not? — the  "  bonds  of  matrimony." 

Rather  let  us  have  a  higher-law  term  for  this 
blessed  thing.  The  emancipation  of  matrimony  ! 
That  is  a  truer  phrase.  So  much  happiness,  so  \ 
(  much  freedom,  with  so  much  innocence !  The 
hearts  which  yesterday  could  not  mingle  without 
siri,  to-day  mingle  freely  and  with  God's  blessing. 

flf  I  could  fancy  a  "free-lover"  loving  with\ 
such  love  as  that  which  I  have  just  now  pictured   j 
to  you,  I  should  marvel  at  the  stupidity  which  / 
would  not  have  that  love  endowed  with  the  freeV 
dom  of  Christian  marriage.    To  feel  that  towards 
this  man  your  heart  yearns  every  hour  ;  that  to- 
wards him  your  whole  being  is  drawn  by  strong 
cords  which  only  death  can  break ;  to  long  to 
f  rest  in  his  stalwart  arms  and  pour  into  his  ear  \ 
(  the    gush  of  tender,   endearing  epithets  which   ' 
'  wells  up  in  your  breast — and  with  all  this  to  feel  J 


; 


22  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

that  the  world  stands  between  you  and  him  and 
says,  This  is  sin  ! 

Is  not  that  being  in  the  bonds  of  slavery  ? 

To  repress  your  natural  instincts  ;  to  hold  back 
every  longing;  to  refrain  from  every  caress,  or 
to  stand  condemned  by  the  stern  laws  of  a  society 
which,  after  all,  is  based  on  pure  morality. 

To  the  lover  with  soul  imbued  with  such  love 
as  this,  Marriage  comes  as  a  blessed  relief  from 
thraldom.  That  which  yesterday  was  sin,  to-day 
is  virtue  !  You  have  stood  up  before  the  world, 
and  with  your  friends  about  you  as  witnesses — 
with  sisters,  brothers,  father,  mother,  all  there 
to  smile  upon  your  act — with  the  minister  of 
God  to  bless  it — you  have  promised  to  love  and 
cherish  each  other  so  long  as  ye  both  shall  live — 
and  all  good  men  and  women  smile  upon  you. 
Is  not  this  freedom  ?  In  truth  there  is  no  other, 
for  those  who  love. 

Yes,  I  pity  the  woman  who  can  feel  satisfied 
to  sacrifice  all  this.  She  can  never  know  what 
real  happiness  is. 

For  the  rest,  I  stand  amazed  at  the  bold  as- 
sumptions of  ignorance  herein.  They  talk  of 
love,  those  "  free-lovers,"  as  glibly  as  if  they 
knew  what  love  is  !  They  have  not  a  glimmer- 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,   Satan  !  23 

ing  idea  of  it.  The  vainest  young  girl  whose  \ 
fancy  is  tickled  with  a  notion  that  some  callow  I 
youth  adores  her,  and  who  knows  therein  as  \ 
much  of  the  true  glow  and  glory  of  love  as  a 
baby  staring  at  pictures  in  "Mother  Goose" 
knows  of  literature  or  high  art — this  girl  is  yet 
as  far  advanced  in  the  knowledge  of  true  love  as 
any  "free-lover"  who  flaunts  her  vile  creed  in  / 
honest  people's  faces  to-day. 

Yes,  unto  me  has  come  that  knowledge  which, 
when  it  comes  to  any  soul,  is  seen  at  once  to  be 
the  simple  truth-Ahat  there  is  no  true  love 

^fc  ~—<~      ^" 

which  is  born  in  a  moment  full-fledged.J  True 
love  never  did  and  never  can  exist  in  a  union  of 
•short  duration.  The  sentiment  is  the  growth 
of  years,  and  of  long  acquaintanceship. 

When  we  were  girls,  each  passing  passion  or) 
fancy  was  believed  to  be  love.  We  knew  !  (Ah, 
isn't  it  astonishing  how  much  we  knew  when  we 
were  very  young  ?\  I  remember  quite  easily  the 
time  when  I  should  have  read  with  Charley 
somebody — I  forget  his^  exact^name  now — such 
words  as  here  are  written,  and  laugjhed  at  them 
as  the  utterances  of  an  old  fogy. 

When  your  day  comes  to  be  an  old  fogy, 
dear  young  girl,  my  kindest  wish  for  you  is  that 


24  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

you  may  be  able  to  lay  your  hand  in  the  hand  \ 
of  a  good  man,  and  feel  that  you  too  have  ac-  -' 
quired  this  knowledge  :    that  life  is  good   for  \ 
I  nothing  without  true  love — not  the  wild,  pester- 
/ing  thing  which  worried    and   tantalized   your 
I  young  heart  years  ago,  but  this  restful,  substan- 
tial, trustful  love  which  makes  you  happy  in  the 
mere   knowledge  that_/fe  is  with  you  ;    which 
makes  you  grateful,  cheerful  and  at  peace  with 
all  the  world,  day  in  and  day  out. 

This  married  couple  at  our  house  illustrate 
my  subject  as  completely  as  if  they  had  been 
framed  by  my  own  fancy — yet,  they  are  no 
more  fictitious  characters  than  you  are  your- 
r  self — you  who  sit  reading  this  page.  They 
have  not  lived  a  humdrum  life.  If  you  were  to 
read  their  story  from  its  beginning,  you  would 
say  that  no  novelist  ever  devised  a  tale  more 
thrilling,  more  romantic.  In  it  is  included 
almost  every  element  which  goes  to  the  making 
of  a  modern  novel.  The  scenes  in  which  they 
have  figured  have  been  the  most  beautiful  and 
picturesque  in  the  world — amid  the  roar  and 
rush  of  mighty  London  town  ;  in  the  whirl  of 
gay,  seductive  Paris ;  away  up  on  the  tops  of 
snowclad  Alps ;  among  the  grandeur  and  the 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,   Satan  !  25 

glory  of  the  Sierras  ;  in  the  Rocky  Mountains  ; 
in  castles  on  the  Rhine  ;  over  the  fierce,  arid 
plains  of  the  great  American  desert ;  through 
the  lagoons  of  the  torrid  South — where  else  ? 
I  might  go  on  for  pages  in  merely  picturing  the 
spots  of  earth  which  this  man  and  woman  have 
pressed  with  their  feet,  in  their  various  roam- 
ings  through  their  strange  life-story. 

After  the  stirring  dramas  of  their  two  lives, 
they  are  now  one.  Look  at  them  in  their 
home  !  They  are  more  enwrapt  in  each  other 
than  any  Isabella  and  Alphonso  you  ever  read 
of.  No  woman  is  so  beautiful  to  that  man  as 
this  woman — yet  her  first  youth  has  gone, 
taking  with  it  the  rosiness  and  roundness  of  her 
cheek,  and  the  crudities  and  inequalities  of  her 
character.  (To  him,  she  is  perfect— as  he  is  to 
her.  1  {'They  read  the  same  books,  lead  the  same 
life  of  labor  and  of  pleasure.^)  Hours  upon 
hours  these  people  will  sit  conversing  together, 
and  never  was  there  known  between  them  one 
moment  of  ennui,  one  second  when  interest 
. flagged,  or  when  they  desired  other  company. 
Other  numberless  hours  have  passed  when  not 
one  syllable  has  been  uttered  ;  hands  were 
busy,  minds  were  plying  on  workaday  affairs  ;  y 


26  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

but  through  all,  and  under  all,  this  great  love 
lies,  not  like  a  roaring  cataract,\^but  like  a  broad 
stream  on  whose  smooth,  strong  breast  every  \ 
earthly  care  is  bravely  and  tranquilly  borne.y 
On  him  the  woman  rests;  "What  a  brave, 
noble  husband  you  have  to  lean  on  ! "  a  friend 
who  knew  him  well  once  wrote  to  her  ;  but  not 
less  does  he  rest  on  her.  I  saw  them  last  even- 
ing at  twilight — none  were  by ;  their  attitude 
was  the  attitude  of  the  most  romantic  lovers. 
But,  when  they  are  in  presence  of  other  people 
they  are  as  prosaic  as  two  of  the  same  sex.  In 
fact,  they  have  had  five  years  of  a  strictly  Pla- 
tonic jnendship — beginning  without  a  thought 
of  love,  a  dream  of  the  possibility  of  marriage — 
their  tenderest  sentiment  one  of  honest  admira- 
tion  for  each  other's  qualities.  They  did  not 
know  it,  but  they  were  bmlding  their  futureJHe 
and  love  on  a  foundation  of  granite.  Time 
rolled  on,  and  the  day  came  when  it  seemed 
^•ight  for  them  now  to  part.  Part  ?  It  seemed 
so  easy  to  do,  until  they  tried  to  do  it,  and  then 
they  found  it  were  easier  to  part  the  waters  of 
ocean,  and  bid  each  half  to  roll  its  separate 
way.  So  they  clasped  hands  and  said,  God  has 
joined  us  together  ;  we  will  obey  His  law. 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  /  27 

Our  dear  Robert  Collyer  says  that  as  God 
made  Eve  for  Adam,  so  makes  He  a  certain  wo- 
man for  every  certain  man  ;  and  when  the  pit- 
falls and  dangers  of  our  own  wicked  blindness 
and  folly,  or  other  people's  wickedness  and 
folly,  fail  to  keep  these  people  apart,  then  this 
is  marriage — and  nothing  else  is  marriage,  no 
can  it  be  made  so. 

In  such  a  marriage  as  this  is  there  any  dan- 
ger of  pining  for  "free  love?"  When  one  has 
found  a  diamond,  one  does  not  wish  to  exchange 
it  for  a  pebble,  no,  nor  for  a  handful  of  pebbles. 


IV. 

How  beautiful  our  Table  looks  to-day  !  Spot- 
less napery,  glittering  glasses,  a  few  appetizing 
niceties  daintily  served.  In  the  center  stands  a 
large  vase,  whose  broken  top  is  deftly  hidden  by 
the  sprays  of  some  long,  green  plant. 

"By  the  way,  Rebecca,  what  is  that  green 
plant? — Oh,  no,  it  cannot  be!  —  not  carrot- 
tops  ! " 

"  Yes,"  says  Rebecca,  pouring  out  the  choco- 
late in  our  thin,  shell-like  china  cups.  "  Mr. 


28  Get   Thee  behind  ^Me,  Satan  ! 

Tyler,  our  greengrocer,  was  just  about  to  cut 
them  off  and  throw  them  under  his  stall ;  but  I 
said,  '  Never  mind,  Mr.  Tyler,  you  needn't  cut 
off  those  carrot-tops ;  I  generally  make  bouquets 
of  them.'  He  laughed  at  that,  but  you  see  how 
pretty  they  look.  I  was  sorry  to  find  Jane  had 
broken  the  vase.  I  didn't  know  it  before.  You 
did,  you  say.  It  is  a  great  drawback  that  Jane's 
daily  avocations  generally  include  the  breaking 
of  something  that  we  would  prefer  to  have  re- 
main whole." 

Jane  is  our  second  girl.  She  is  the  finest- 
hued  and  the  slowest  creature,  we  think,  that 
ever  lived.  Her  complexion  is  as  white  as  wax, 
and  her  hair  is  so  light  that  at  the  temples  you 
can  scarcely  tell  where  the  skin  finishes,  and  the 
hair  begins.  Her  eyes  are  blue;  pretty  little 
figure  ;  not  yet  eighteen.  We  have  often  tried 
to  get  at  the  mystery  of  this  strangely  fair  com- 
plexion. Perhaps  some  of  us  muggy  folks 
would  like  to  have  one  like  it.  She  said  once 
that  the  reason  of  it  was  that  she  cut  her  feet 
with  a  stone  when  she  was  ten  years  old,  and 
the  blood  all  ran  out  of  her  body. 

"  But  you  must  have  some  blood  left,"  said 
Algie,  "  or  you'd  die." 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  29 

"No,  I  ain't  got  no  blood  left  in  me  body," 
persisted  Jane  ;  "  that's  the  reason  I'm  so  slow. 
That's  the  reason  I  break  things." 

Of  course  after  this  bloodless  explanation 
we  should  be  cold-blooded  indeed  if  we  were 
to  think  of  scolding  her  when  she  breaks  things. 
We  can  only  wait  patiently  till  she  gets  some 
more  blood,  or  submit  quietly,  and  as  a  matter 
of  blood,  to  her  daily  breakages. 

Jane  is  not  very  strong-minded.  A  mouse 
is  a  terrible  animal  to  her.  One  or  two  large 
roaches  nearly  prostrated  her  with  fright.  Re- 
becca cheered  her  spirits,  and  brought  her  a 
trap. 

"Now,"  she  said,  "Jane,  just  put  that  in 
your  room,  and  when  you  hear  the  roaches  hol- 
loa you'll  know  you've  caught  some." 

"Will  they  holler,  mum?"  queries  Jane, 
aghast  at  the  prospect. 

There  is  no  good,  sensible,  housekeeping  rea- 
son why  we  have  not  discharged  Jane  long  ago. 
She  is  certainly  not  a  prize,  viewed  merely  as  a 
servant.  Why  then  do  we  keep  her?  In  a 
word,  because  we  are  attached  to  her.  We  did 
let  her  go  once,  and  she  cried  as  if  her  heart 
would  break.  Then  she  took  to  making  us 


3o  Get  Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

visits  occasionally,  just  to  see  how  we  were  get- 
ting on.  And  one  day,  in  a  weak  moment  of 
real,  kindly  affection  for  the  child  (she  is  scarcely 
more),  we  took  her  back. 

Yes,  our  love  is  so  all-embracing  that  it  needs 
must  cover  with  its  warmth  every  creature  with- 
in our  doors — say  nothing  of  those  without  them. 

It  covers  the  very  cat.  Not  because  she  is  at 
all  a  superior  character  of  a  cat.  She  is,  in  fact, 
a  somewhat  humdrum  creature,  our  Kittle.  She 
has  no  bright  ways  ;  she  is  not  very  handsome  ; 
she  has  even  a  disreputable  habit  of  sleeping  at 
odd  times  in  the  coal-bin,  and  as  a  result  her 
white  coat  is  sometimes  sadly  soiled.  Still  we 
love  Kittle,  and  it  would  go  hard  with  the  dog 
that  should  dare  to  worry  her. 

When  she  curls  herself  upon  the  rug  before 
the  grate  and  falls  to  purring  contentedly,  she 
looks  so  happy  that  we  are  tempted  to  endow 
her  with  all  the  feline  virtues.  She  becomes  a 
type  of  the  sweet,  domestic  peace  which  is  the 
guardian  spirit  of  our  home. 


Get  Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  3 1 


V. 

So  profound  is  my  reverence  for  true  Mar- 
riage, that  my  soul  chafes  almost  unto  fury  at  the 
idea  of  baseness  in  any  way  associated  with  it. 
f     If  I  abhor  Mrs.   Freelove  when  she  rails  at  \ 
/  marriage,    I    abhor  Mrs.    Mercenary     no^Jess    j 
/    when  she  pollutes  marriage  by  making  bargains  / 

in  its  holyname. 

*    i     Between  the  woman  who  lives  with  two  hus-\ 
/bands  and  is  married  to  neither,  and  the  woman 
who  marries  the  man  she  well  knows  she  does 
/    not  love,  there   is   not  so   much  choice  as  be- 
tween a  rotten  apple  and  a  sound  horse-chest-/ 
1   nut. 

By  all  the  love  I  bear  for  marriage,  I  protest 
against  the  pernicious  errors  so  earnestly  foster- 
ed in  its  name — chief  among  which  is  that  error 
i  which  holds  a  girl  put  into  the  world  for   the  J 
I  purpose   of  marrying  a  man,   and   for   nothing 
else. 

When  you  will  believe,  and  act  up  to  the  be-   . 
lief,  that  a  boy's  purpose   in  life  is  that  limited 
one,  I  will  concede  that  the  girl  has  but  that 
one  excuse  for  being. 


32  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

But  you  know  very  well  that  you  have  ambi- 
tions for  your  boy.  You  do  not  teach  him  to 
consider  marriage  as  an  only  end  in  life.  To 
be  sure,  you  hope  he  will  some  day  marry  and 
settle  down,  become  a  good  husband  and  father, 
and  an  estimable  citizen  ;  but  you  leave  all 
that  to  come  about  in  its  own  good  time.  If 
this  were  your  course  with  your  girl,  it  would 
be  better  for  her — and  better  for  the  boys, 
too. 

While  there  is  abroad  in  the  land -an  army  of 
girls,  each  seeking  whom  she  may  marry,  your 
boy  is  in  danger  of  being  entrapped  into  a  foolish 
marriage,  which  will  make  work  for  the  divorce 
court  later  on. 

Verily  I  say  unto  you — and  I  am  no  man- 
hater,  but  so  far  at  least  as  one  man  is  concern- 
ed a  devoted  man-lover — that  men  are  to  blame 
for  the  married  flirt^for  the  half-starved  sewnig- 
gjrlAfor  the  insolent,  inefficient  servant-woman, 
i  Every  one  of  these  separate  branches  and 
others  like  them — even  that  terrible  one  where 
lost  souls,  dragging  polluted  bodies,  haunt  the 
night  streets,  and  offend  the  chastity  of  the 
moon  which  coldly  shines  on  them — every  one 
of  these  is  a  branch  of  the  deadly  Upas  which 


Get   TJiee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  33 

men  yearly  plant,  daily,  water,  hourly  tend,  f 
The  root  is  that  widespread  and  pernicious  idea, 
carefully  fostered  by  men  in  a  thousand  ways, 
by  hints,  by  winks,  by  plain  words,  by  actions 
which  speak  louder  than  words,  that  the  busi- 
ness in  life  for  women  is  marriage  ;  the  only 
girl  who  is  successful  is  the  girl  who  is  engaged  ; 
the  only  woman  whose  "  fortune  is  made  "  is  thej 
woman  who  has  hooked  a  husband. 

You,  father,  scanning  these  lines,  deny  per- 
haps that  you  have  ever  said  to  your  daughter 
that  her  business  in  life  is  to  get  married.  But 
have  you  ever  done  anything  to  encojorage  her 
to  have  anyother  business  in  life  ?  Have  you 
even  begged  her  to  refrain  till  the  last  moment 
from  taking  from  your  hearthstone  the  exceed- 
ing great  joy  which  her  presence  brings  there  ? 
Has  it  never  happened  that  you  have  recom- 
mended this  man  to  her  consideration,  and  add- 
ed that  he  was  rich  and  looking  for  a  wife  ? 
Have  you  never  shut  the  door  on  that  one  be- 
cause he  hadn't  a  dollar  ?  Or  that  one  because 
he  was  no*;  a  marrying  man  ?  Have  you  never 
alluded  to  the  expense  of  keeping  a  large  family 
of  girls  ?  Have  you  never  audibly  wondered 

how  Smith's  ugly  daughter  caught  rich  Johnson  ? 

2* 


34  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

Has  it  never  struck  you  as  amazing  strange  that 
our  girls  got  no  offers  when  everybody  else's  girls 
geJL  married  ? 

If  you  could  place  yourself  in  the  position  of 
a  girl  so  situated,  eating  some  one  else's  bread, 
wearing  some  one  else's  clothes,  occupying  a 
room  in  some  one  else's  house,  you  would  know 
how  to  feel  for  her.  A  thousand  things  cut  her 
the  soul.  That  frown  you  wore  at  breakfast 
this  morning — was  that  because  young  Batkins 
hasn't  proposed  yet  ?  Perhaps  you  spoke  of  the 
high  price  of  flour — nay,  I  do  not  mean  that 
you  intended  anything  personal  by  such  a  purely 
business-man  remark,  but  it  hit  the  tender,  sen- 
sitive, self-reproaching  girl  at  your  table,  who 
knows  you  want  to  marry  her  off. 

"  '  It  is  nine  dollars  a  barrel,'  said  he,  at  the 

/  supper-table,"  wrote  a  lovely  girl  to  me  during 
the  war,  "  and  I  laid  down  the  bit  of  bread  I 

;   was  eating.   Another  morsel  would  have  choked 

\me." 

I  have  known  girls  whose  guardians  exhibited 
such  unseemly  anxiety  to  get  them  married  off 
that  every  manifestation  of  growing  admiration 
on  the  part  of  their  gentleman  friends  was  kept 
by  the  girls  a  profound  secret,  lest  the  impatient 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  35 

elders  should  rush  in  at  the  next  visit,  take  all 
for  granted,  and  ask  When  the  wedding  ? 

But  you  may  say,  Is  it  not  likely  that  the  sup- 
port of  these  helpless  girls  is  a  serious  burden  to 
these  parents  or  these  guardians  ? 

Sans  doute.  Nobody  disputes  that.  Indeed, 
no  family  I  know  seems  rich  enough  to  bear  this 
burden,  and  I  know  some  families  of  tolerable 
wealth,  too  ;  millionaires,  at  least.  But  I  would 
still  like  to  find  a  family  which  is  rich  enough 
not  to  care  whether  its  daughters  marry,  or 
whether  they  do  not. 

One  of  the  richest  men  in  New  York  said  in 
my  hearing  once,  speaking  of  his  daughter  who 
had  passed  the  age  at  which  girls  generally 
marry,  "  I  get  angry  at  her  sometimes,  because  \ 
she  don't  get  a  husband.  She  needn't  bring 
me  a  poor  man.  I'm  not  going  to  help  a  poor 
son-in-law.  No,  she's  a  rich  man's  daughter, 
always  been  used  to  luxuries,  and  she  must 
marry  a  rich  man." 

But,  that  is  what  poor  men's  daughters  want 
to  marry  ;  and  if  this  girl  was  placed  exactly  in 
the  same  position  as  a  poor  girl,  what  advantage 
was  it  to  her  to_be  the  daughter  of  a  rich  man  ? 

This  same  man  freely  gave  his  son  one  hun- 


36  Get  Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

dred  thousand  dollars  to  set  him  up  in  business 
in  Australia ;  and  in  talking  a  bookful  at  him 
one  day  I  told  him  that  he  had  much  better 
have  divided  that  money  between  his  children 
and  given  them  equal  chances  for  success.  Fifty 
thousand  dollars  must  be  no  small  sum  even  in 
Australia  where  they  dig  gold  out  of  the  earth  ; 
and  fifty  thousand  in  New  York  would  have  en- 
abled the  girl  to  make  the  investment  in  a 
husband  she  desired  (yes,  there  was  the  old 
romance — the  poor  lover,  the  rich  daughter,  the 
obdurate  father,  true  to  his  r61e  of  stern  parent) 
and  trust  to  this  man,  her  heart's  choice,  to  get 
an  income  out  of  it.  It  seems  to  me,  with  as 
much  money  as  that  invested  in  United  States 
bonds,  a  person  of  the  poorest  abilities  could 
sit  down  and  make  a  decent  living  out  of  them 
by  cutting  off  the  coupons. 

But  to  return  to  people  who  really  find  it 
difficult  to  meet  their  weekly  expenses,  and  by 
whom  the  support  of  an  additional  person  is 
keenly  felt.  I  say,  very  well ;  then  you  must 
take  one  of  two  positions :  either  say  frankly 
that  you  are  not  _able  to  support  this^  girl,  and 
take  the  consequence  of  that ;  .or  say  warmly 
and  truthfully  that  you  are,  and  take  the  con- 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  37 

sequence  of  that.  If  the  first,  then  help  your 
girl  lovingly  and  cheerfully  to^  help  herself ;  let, 
her  choose  her  career  ;  she  knows  better  than 
you  do  what  she  can  do.  If  her  talents  are  of 
no  more  brilliant  character  than  will  take  her — 
as -our  Norah's  have — into  the  kitchen  of  your 
next-door  neighbor,  place  no  obstacle  in  the  way 
of  her  doing  that.  If  they  lead  her  to  making 
speeches  in  public,  blow  not  one  breath  against/ 
her  for  doing  that. 

A  now-celebrated  literary  woman  told  me 
that  her  brother  persistently  denied  her  relation- 
ship with  him  for  years,  because  his  pride  was 
wounded;  he  had  not  strength  of  mind  enough 
to  support  the  position  concerning  woman's 
work  and  wages  which  she  boldly  took  in  her 
writings.  But  he  got  bravely  over  it  as  years 
passed  and  her  success  grew — even  to  the  ex- 
tent of  sharing  her  income  with  her  in  a  fraternal 
spirit. 

It  is  such  paltry  family  pride  as  this,  which 
does  much  of  the  mischief.     There  is  no  girl  so  \ 
shallow  that  she  cannot  learn  to  do  something  / 
that  would  earn  her  bread.     Nine  girls  out  of 
ten  do  do,  in  the  household  where  they  live-^-for 
which  they  get  no  praise,  no  thanks,  much  less 


38  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

any  pay-Vsuch  work  as,  were  it  performed  in 
any  other  household,  would  bring  them  bread 
and  wages  too,  and  both  would  be  considered 
fairly  earned. 

I  have  spoken  of  our  Rebecca — our  good  sis- 
ter, who  does  us  the  happiness  of  sharing  our 
home.  She  lives  with  us;  we  all  live  together. 
That  is  the  poetic  side.  The  practical  side  is 
that  she  is  our  housekeeper,  and  works  hard. 
She  is  a  good  housekeeper,  and  would  com- 
mand her  price  in  the  market.  She  has  never 
been  in  the  market,  but  that  is  no  reason  why 
we  should  ignore  her  value.  We  do  not.  A 
pretty  figure  we  should  make  pretending  that 
we  think  so  much  of  her,  and  then  giving  her 
less  than  persons  utterly  indifferent  to  her  would 
}  give  for  her  services !  Any  stranger's  family 
who  needed  her  services  would  give  her  board, 
lodging  and  salary.  Shall  we  not  do  as  much 
for  her  as  a  stranger's  family  would?  We  do. 
We  give  her  board,  lodging  and  salary — and 
loye.^.  Thus  we  have  the  advantage  of  the 

»  j 

stranger's  family,  and  not  the  stranger's  family 
of  us. 

But  if — which  God  forefend — -our  lovely  home 
should  be  broken    up   to-morrow — its   hearth- 


Get  Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  39 

stone  shattered,  its  ashes  flung  to  the  winds — I 
would  gladly  take  that  dear  sister  by  the  hand 
and  go  with  her  from  house  to  house  of  my 
wealthy  friends,  and  ask  them  if  they  didn't 
want  to  engage  my  sister  as  housekeeper  on  a; 
salary.  No  pride  of  mine  should  stand  in  the 
way  of  her  earning  an  honorable  livelihood.  A 
dastardly  coward  I  should  be  indeed  were  I,  in 
my  effort  to  hide  my  fallen  fortunes,  to  con- 
strain her  to  remain  by  my  side  lest  the  world 
should  comment  on  her  going  forth  to  labor — 
the  while  I  led  her  a  life  of  torture,  grudged  her  / 
the  bread  she  ate,  even  insulted  her  widowhood 
perhaps  by  urgingher  to  marry  for  her  bed_and 
board !  I_thank  my  God  I  am  no  such  coward. 

Now  and  forever  be  accursed  that  pride  which  \ 
drives  many  a _  noble-hearted^Jiand -cuffed  girl^  V" 
into  an  abhorred  and  bestial  marriage  !     Pride 
of  family  and  of  purse,  how  I  wish  your  father     / 
Satan  would  rise  and  claim  you   both  for  his 
own,  and  sweep  you  off  the  earth  where  you 
work  such  woful  mischief ! 


4O  Get  Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 


VI. 

How  many  or  how  few  years  ago  it  matters 
not,  but  it  was  before  I  had  written  or  publicly 
spoken  about  woman's  rights,  or  wrongs,  I  ac- 

/companied  a  beautiful  girl  on  a  strange  errand. 

\  Goaded  by  the  innuendos  relating  to  the  extra- 
ordinary fact  that  nobody  proposed  to  her, 
while  Mollie  Follie  had  just  caught  a  rich  man 
— a  leather-dealer  in  the  swamp,  whose  sole 
subjects  of  conversation  were  tanning  and  hides 
— cut  to  the  quick  by  references  to  the  high 
price  of  flour,  the  ruinous  rate  of  living,  rent, 
clothing,  shoe-leather,  &c. — this  girl  found  an 
excuse  for  leaving  the  breakfast-table,  and  the 
house. 

"An  early  visitor,  Estelle,"  I  said  to  her, 
kissing  her  peachy  cheek  as  she  entered  my 
room. 

"  Yes,  early  in  one  way,  but  sadly  late  in 
another.  Please  read  that  advertisement,  cut 
from  this  morning's  paper." 

Wanted,  a  nurse -girl,  to  take  care  of  three  young  children. 
One  able  to  give  some  primary  instruction  prefsrred.  Apply 
between  8  and  9  in  the  morning,  at,  etc.,  etc. 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  41 

"What  of  it?"  I  asked. 

"I  am  going  to  apply  for  the  situation." 

"You?" 

A  girl  who  lived  in  a  brown-stone  front,  with 
— presumably — nothing  to  do  from  morning  to 
night,  apply  for  a  nurse-girl's  situation ! 

I  say  presumably,  but  the  presumption  was 
far  from  correct ;  the  truth  was  that  she  made 
beds,  swept  floors,  dusted  the  parlors,  polished 
the  glass  and  silver,  and  on  washing  and  ironing 
days  went  into  the  kitchen  and  washed  dishes. 
But  all  this  went  for  nothing.  If  the  fact  was 
noted  now  and  then,  she  was  made  to  under- 
stand plainly  that  if  it  were  not  for  her  sake, 
they  would  scarcely  be  at  the  expense  of  living 
in  such  a  house  at  all  ;  if  she  timidly  grieved 
that  they  should  do  this,  and  assured  them  that 
for  her  part  she  would  be  happier  in  a  cheaper 
house,  they  made  tacit  answer  that  such  houses 
were  the  best  places  in  which  to  catch  rich 
husbands ;  that  really  skilful  girls  did  catch  such 
husbands  with  such  houses  ;  that  Mollie  Follie 
had  just  done  so.  She  (Estelle)  had  been  taken 
to  Saratoga,  Newport,  Long  Branch  (the  very 
last  places  to  catch  a  husband  !)  ;  she  had  passed 
a  winter  in  a  gay  city  hotel ;  and  finally  she 


42  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

was  in  this  house.  How  much  longer  were 
they  to  wait  for  the  returns  of  this  heavy  in- 
vestment ? 

If  you  ask  me  if  thus  much  was  said  by  Es- 
telle's  aunt  and  uncle,  in  so  niany  words,  I  an- 
swer— Probably  not.  But,  it  was  there  ;  that 
was  the  atmosphere  she  breathed.  The  air  had 
been  especially  charged  with  the  offensive  gas 


morning. 

"What  can  I  do  for  you,  dear?  "  I  asked,  lay- 
ing down  my  pen. 

"Come  with  me,  please.  I  confess  I  feel 
somewhat  timid.  But  I  will  go — whether  you 
come  or  not." 

A  long  ride  in  a  stage,  and  a  long  walk 
westward  across  the  avenues,  brought  us  to  the 
advertised  house.  It  was  not  such  a  fine  one  as 
that  in  which  Estelle  lived.  I  confess-  my  heart 
beat  a  little  faster  as  we  mounted  the  steps  ;  as 
for  Estelle,  her  lips  were  livid,  but  they  were 
tightly  set. 

We  asked  to  see  "the  lady,"  and  were  ush- 
ered into  the  parlor.  Why  not  ?  We  visited  in 
better  houses  than  this. 

The  lady  soon  appeared,  smiling  and  extend- 
ing her  hands,  mistaking  us  for  friends  as  she 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  43 

advanced  from  the  sombre  depths  of  the  back 
parlor.  As  she  drew  near  she  saw  her  mistake, 
and,  seating  herself,  gave  a  polite  glance  of 
awaiting  our  pleasure  to  tell  her  the  object  of 
our  call. 

At  this  moment  my  eye  rested  on  Estelle,  and 
though  many  and  many  a  time  I  had  admired 
her  from  the  depths  of  my  heart,  and  thought 
her  the  loveliest  girl  I  ever  saw,  yet  never  in  my 
life  had  I  seen  her  looking  at  once  so  beautiful 
and  so  elegant  as  now.  No  detail  of  her  ap- 
pearance escaped  me ;  and  at  this  moment, 
though  years  of  sorrow  and  suffering  have 
elapsed,  chasing  away  many  beautiful  visions  of 
the  past,  I  can  yet  see  her  peach-like  face  set  in 
the  frame  of  a  soft  gray  velvet  bonnet,  a  delicate 
moss-rose  lying  on  the  parting  of  her  luxuriant 
hair,  her  long  eyelashes'  shading  her  downcast 
eyes.  She  was  dressed  from  head  to  foot  in 
soft  gray  poplin,  with  perfectly  fitting  gloves  of 
the  same  shade ;  the  gold  band  bracelets  she 
always  wore  clasped  her  wrists ;  and  her  muff 
and  fur  collar  had  been  recently  bought  for  sev- 
enty-five dollars. 

I  might  give  you  an  idea  of  how  this  toilet 
was  got  together  without  great  expense.  Such 


44  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

a  girl  is  generally  a  mistress  of  expedients. 
The  effect  of  Estelle's  costume  was  that  of  great 
expensiveness.  But  the  dress  was  an  old  one 
of  her  aunt's  made  over  ;  the  furs  were  a  long- 
promised  present  from  a  distant  rich  relation  ; 
the  bonnet  was  her  own  handiwork,  thrown  to- 
gether out  of  a  handful  of  discarded  materials  ; 
the  gloves  were  new.  Her  aunt  had  bought 
them  with  a  groan  and  thrust  them  upon  the 
unwilling  recipient  a  few  days  before.  It  was 
not  her  dress,  however,  but  her  attitude,  which 
was  so  striking  ;  as  she  sat  there  in  all  her  glo- 

/  rious  beauty,  utterly  reposeful,   utterly  deter- 
mined, almost  sanctified  in  her  stillness  and  her 

\  resolve. 

"  I  have  come  to  apply  for  the  place  of  nurse- 
girl,"  she  said  sweetly,  lifting  her  pure  eyes 
steadily  to  the  lady's  face. 

Please  imagine  the  expression  of  this  latter  ! 
If  a  bombshell  had  burst  in  her  parlor  she 
could  not  have  been,  apparently,  more  astonish- 
ed. She  looked  at  me,  she  looked  at  Estelle, 
she  looked  at  herself.  By  all  odds,  Estelle  was 
not  only  the  handsomest  and  the  youngest,  but 
also  the  wealthiest  looking  person  of  the  trio. 
The  lady  was  rather  untidy  in  a  dressing-gown 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  45 

and  slippers  ;  I  was  in  my  working  dress — a 
substantial  English  linsey,  suited  to  the  labor 
which  deals  with  ink-bottles  and  dusty  libraries. 

There  is  no  use  giving  the  conversation  in 
detail.  The  coolest  person  present  was  Estelle. 
The  lady  could  only  reply  in  broken  snatches  of 
sentences. 

"  But  the  wages,  such  a  trifle  ! — seven  dollars 
a  month."  *• 

"They  include  board  and  lodging.  I  will 
take  them  if  you  are  satisfied  with  me,"  said 
Estelle. 

"  But  have  you  ever  taken  care  of  young 
children  ? — washed  them,  dressed  them,  walked 
them  out  in  the  street  ?  One  of  my  children  is 
a  baby  and  must  be  carried,  or  pushed  in  a 
perambulator." 

"  I  could  soon  learn  how  to  do  these  things," 
said  Estelle,  with  exceeding  sweetness  and 
modesty.  "  And  I  like  children." 

Here  I  put  in  a  word  about  her  great  amia- 
bility, her  gentleness,  her  refinement ;  but  all 
this  was  written  on  her  face.  The  lady  hesita- 
ted. It  was  evident  she  feared  there  was  some 
deep  mystery  here  ;  some  plot,  some  plan, 
some  Wilkie  Collins  imbroglio  of  which  she  was 


46  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

to  be  the  victim.  That  so  simple  a  thing  could 
be,  as  that  the  girl  had  sought  the  situation  to 
do  honest  work  and  get  an  honest  livelihood  in 
return  for  it,  apparently  did  not  strike  her  as 
probable.  Yet  her  womanly  heart  was  touched. 
She  was  strongly  tempted  to  say  yes. 

At  that  moment  the  front  door  opened  with 
a  latch-key,  and  an  instant  after,  a  man's  form 
stood  gn  the  threshold  of  this  parlor.  It  was 
easy  to  see  he  was  this  lady's  son.  He  was 
fashionably  attired,  and  had  an  all-night  air 
which  spoke  of  champagne  suppers  and  other 
dissipations. 

At  first  the  lady  smiled  on  seeing  him  ;  then 
she  looked  at  Estelle,  and  then  her  brow 
clouded. 

The  young  man  after  glancing  admiringly  at 
Estelle  (who  would  not  have  done  so  ?)  turned 
and  went  up  stairs. 

As  for  Estelle  she  had  not  heard  hts  step, 
and  had  not  lifted  her  eyes. 

The  lady  spoke  up  sharply.  Her  whole  man- 
ner had  changed. 

"  Well  I'm  sorry,  but  it  is  impossible  for  me 
to  take  you.  You  are  too  young.  You  will  not 
suit." 


Get   TJiee  behind  Me,  Satan  /  47 

Nothing  remained  but  for  us  to  take  our 
leaves.  We  took  them. 

If  that  lady  should  read  this  book  she  will  not 
learn  from  it  who  Estelle  was,  but  it  may  sur- 
prise her  to  learn  the  name  of  the  person  who 
went  to  her  house  with  a  friend  to  help  beg  a 
nurse-girl's  situation. 

I  have  formed  many  theories  about  her  sud- 
den change  of  manner.  The  wildest,  and  there- 
fore the  one  which  lingers  longest  in  my  memory, 
is  that  she  connected — in  some  way  known  best 
to  herself — the  beautiful  applicant  for  the  nurse- 
girl's  position  with  her  dissipated  son,  and  re- 
solved at  once  that  she  would  have  no  wool 
pulled  over  Tier  eyes  ! 

I  never  broached  this  suspicion  to  Estelle ;  it 
would  have  caused  her  unnecessary  pain. 

When  we  had  turned  the  corner,  and  were  out 
of  possible  view  of  the  lady  or  her  son,  we 
stopped,  and  took  our  bearings.  Then  I  ob- 
served that  Estelle's  lip  was  quivering. 

"  Is  it  not  dreadful  that  I  cannot  get  a  place 
even  as  child's  nurse  !  Oh,  what  an  unlucky 
girl  I  am  !  What  was  I  born  for  ?  Nobody 
cares  for  me — nobody  wants  me  !  " 

Spite  of  her  efforts,  some  hot  tears  fell.     I 


48  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

think  several  of  the  passers-by  saw  them.  But, 
dear  me  !  a  wretched,  broken-spirited  girl  is  no 
novelty  in  the  streets  of  New  York. 

"  Being  amateurs  in  this  business,"  I  said, 
"  I  am  inclined  to  think  we  made  one  mistake. 
You  are  too  well-dressed — you  look  too  much 
like  a  lady.  One  would  think  that  ought  to  be 
a  recommendation  to  a  mother  who  has  little 
girls  growing  up  ;  but  it  is  marvellous  how  peo- 
ple's minds  run  in  the  old  ruts.  She  wants  an 
Irish  or  German  nurse- girl  of  the  orthodox 
pattern  ;  and  when  she  has  got  her,  she  will  pass 
half  her  time  in  abusing  her,  and  the  other  half 
in  wondering  whether  the  nurse  isn't  abusing  the 
children.  But,  no  matter.  Rome  wasn't  built 
in  a  day.  We  live  and  learn.  Let  us  now  go 
where  a  lady-like  appearance  and  good  clothing 
are  a  recommendation — to  the  retail  stores." 

With  an  interval  of  but  ten  minutes  to  eat  a 
sandwich  in  a  baker's  shop  we  passed  the  whole 
of  that  day  in  unsuccessful  efforts  to  get  a  place 
in  a  "store."  Everything  was  full.  It  was  dusk 
when  we  stopped,  almost  completely  baffled  ; 
and  we  were  as  tired  as  hounds  after  the  chase. 

"There  is  only  one  thing  more,"  I  said;  "  I 
have  a  friend  who  has  an  influential  position  in 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  49 

Nip  and  Tuck's  Sewing-Machine  Establishment. 
She  may  be  able  to  do  something  for  you." 

We  were  not  far  from  the  place,  and  found 
them  just  bustling  about  before  closing  for  the 
night.  A  few  words  from  me  made  my  friend 
understand  my  errand. 

Well,  she  said,  they  were  full  now  (the  old 
story) ;  but  a  vacancy  might  presently  occur  ;  in 
fact  they  might  make  one.  She  would  speak 
to  Mr.  Tuck,  the  junior  partner. 

He  came.  He  was  favorably  impressed.  He 
said  they  always  wanted  their  young  ladies  to 
be  nice-looking  ("Did  he  presume  to  mean  a 
compliment?"  said  Estelle,  afterwards);  but, 
one  thing  every  new-comer  must  understand, 
and  that  was  : — that  she  had  got  to  recognize, 
that  she  had  got  to  believe  that  theirs  was  the 
finest  machine  in  the  market.  She  had  got  to- 
believe  that  ;  otherwise  she  could  not  impress 
customers  with  that  belief.  It  was  the  best 
machine,  he  declared  stoutly  ;  no  machine  that 
ever  was  put  together  could  do  the  worker  stand 
the  wear  that  their  machine  could,  and  as  for  the 
stitch,  it  was  by  all  odds  the  finest  stitch  ever 
seen.  Any  girl  who  came  there  with  a  preju- 
dice in  favor  of  any  other  machine  was  not 


50  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

wanted.     He   might   as  well   say  that   first   as 
last. 

Estelle  had  always  used  that  which  is  the  best 
known  of  the  machines,  and  to  which  Nip  and 
Tuck's  little  affair  compares  as  a  tea-kettle  to  a 
locomotive. 

"  For  the  first  month,"  continued  Mr.  Tuck, 
"  we  give  no  wages.  Our  young  ladies  are 
learning  to  operate  "  (meantime  an  inducement 
to  customers  was,  that  they  could  learn  to 
operate  in  an  hour!}  ;  "and  when  they  know 
how  to  operate  we  give  wages  according  to  the 
ability  of  the  operator." 

"How  much  do  you  give  to  a  good  opera- 
tor?" I  asked. 

"  Well,  we  give  some  of  our  young  ladies 
seven  dollars  a  week." 

"  Seven  dollars  !" 

"Yes,  but  those  are  our  best-dressed  young 

/ladies.     We  expect  those  young  ladies  to  dress 

1  very  well.     And  then  we  seat  them  by  the  win- 

\  dows.     We  should  be  glad  to  have  this  young 

\ady  sit  there." 

The  shop  was  on  a  corner,  and  was  one  sheet 
of  plate  glass,  so  to  speak,  from  floor  to  ceiling, 
on  both  streets.  Everything  and  everybody  in- 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  51 

side  was  as  plainly  visible  to  the  outside  throng 
of  Broadway  as  if  the  machines  and  the  girls 
were  out  on  the  sidewalk. 

Estelle  shuddered,  as  she  glanced  at  the  huge   ] 
show  window  where  she  should  be  expected  to  j 
sit(pn  exhibition^  but,  without  referring  to  that, 
she  said,  in  her  candid  way, 

"  But  this  stitch  ravels  the  whole  length  if 
you  pull  the  thread  ;  how  do  you  explain  that 
to  customers  ?" 

Mr.  Tuck  seemed  to  get  greatly  excited 
whenever  the  stitch  the  machine  made  was  in 
question.  He  grew  quite  red  in  the  face,  and 
said  loudly: 

"  It's  an  advantage  !  Tell  'em  ..it's  an  advan- 
tage. Who  wants  a  machine  where  you  have 
to  cut  every  stitch  in  ripping  ?  Besides,  it  only 
ravels  one  way.  You  can't  ravel  it  the  other." 

He  pulled  on  one  end  of  a  couple  of  bits  of 
cloth  which  were  stitched  together  ;  this  re- 
sisted, and  he  looked  triumphant  ;  but  as  he 
finished  his  experiment,  a  loop  at  the  other  end 
caught  on  his  watch-chain,  and  ripped  the  seam 
the  whole  length  before  you  could  have  said 
Jack  Robinson. 

Estelle  drew  me  aside.     "  It  would  be  utterly 


52  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

false  on  my  part  to  say  I  believed  that  stitch 
superior  to  that  made  by  the  machine  we  use  at 
home.  It  is  only  good  for  millinery  work,  or 
for  light  fabrics  which  are  not  to  be  washed. 
!  How  can  I  tell  a  falsehood  ?y 

Will  you  think  me  a  wicked  counsellor  ?  My 
feet  were  sore  from  standing  and  walking  in  my 
hitherto  fruitless  efforts  to  aid  this  girl  to  escape 
from  the  degrading  position  she  occupied  at 
home  ;  I  was  hungry,  I  was  tired,  and  I  knew 
that  her  sufferings  and  discomforts  were  greater 
than  mine.  I  begged  her  to  be  diplomatic  ;  to 
try  to  manage  matters  so  that  she  need  injure 
neither  her  conscience  nor  her  interest,  and  take 
the  place. 

After  stipulating  that  she  might  sit  with  her 
back  to  the  window,  and  that  she  was  to  re- 
ceive, seven   dollars  a  week   after  four  weeks' 
apprenticeship,     Estelle    concluded    to     come. 
/She  had  resolved  in  her  heart  that  if  the  hour\ 
I  came  when  she  must  tell  a  falsehood,  she  would 
\  resign  her  place  ;  meantime,  it  had  not  come, 
and  it  might  not ;  and  she  was  making  a  begin- 
ning in  self-support. 

I  left  Estelle  listening  to  some  final  remarks 
from    Mr.  Tuck,  and  sauntered   slowly  to  the 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  53 

door  talking  to  the  lady  through  whose  kind 
interest  this  arrangement  had  been  made. 

In  another  instant  Estelle  brushed  past  with 
her  face  aflame.  She  grasped  my  hand. 

"  Come,  please,"  said  she,  "  I  shall  not  take 
this  situation — cannot — must  not." 

Before  I  knew  it  the  glass  doors  were  closed 
behind  us.  My  last  glance  through  them  re- 
vealed to  my  eyes  in  the  dusk,  which  the  busy 
lamp-lighter  was  fast  dispelling;  Mr.  Tuck  shrug- 
ging his  shoulders,  half  angrily,  half  contemptu- 
ously. 

Of  course,  I  thought  that  he  had  insulted  her. 

But  I  did  the  worthy  Mr.  Tuck  great  injustice 
in  thinking  so.  In  declining  the  place,  Estelle 
had  no  doubt  greatly  insulted  him. 

She  did  not  wait  for  me  to  ask  her  what  had 
happened.  She  spoke  : 

"Where  in  the  world  do  you  suppose  he 
wanted  to  send  me  to-morrow — with  a  machine?" 

"  Not  to  some  den  of  iniquity  ?  " 

"To  Mrs.  Wickersham's." 

"Who  is  she?" 

"  Don't  you  know  Mrs.  Wickersham  ?  One 
of  the  richest  ladies  who  visits  at  our  house — 
Aunt  Sophia's  most  stylish  friend.  She  would 


54  Get   Tliee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

die  of  anger  and  shame  if  she  were  to  find  out 
that  I  had  gone>to  Mrs.  Wickersham's." 

"  Did  you  not  contemplate  these  probabilities 
when  you  resolved  to  cut  loose  the  bonds  which 
chafe  you  so  ?  " 

"  I  did  not  contemplate  the  probability  of  my 
going  as  a  machine  girl  with  another  machine 
girl  to  Mrs.  Wickersham's  house,  where  I  have 
been  a  guest." 

"  And  will  you-  please  tell  me,"  said  I,  almost 
out  of  patience,  "whether  Mrs.  Wickersham,  a 
heartless,  soulless  woman,  ignorant  and  narrow- 
minded,  given  over  to  dress  and  show,  who  pre- 
tends to  admire  you — I  remember  her  now — 
more  than  any  girl  she  ever  knew,  and  yet  who 
wouldn't  give  you  a  dollar  to  buy  your  dinner 
to-night — " 

"  I  don't  believe  she's  got  a  dollar  to  give," 
said  Estelle  interrupting,  and  thereby  breaking 
the  smooth  flow  of  my  torrent  of  indigna- 
tion. 

/    The  vision  of  this  wretched  Mrs.  Wickersham, 

/without  a  dollar  to  call  her  own  ;  the  poor,  weak 

',  appendage  to  a  rich  man,  who  hung  a  pair  of 

three-thousand-dollar  diamond  ear-rings  in  her 

\  ears,  not  out  of  compliment  to  her  ears  (which 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  /  55 

received   few   enough    compliments  from   him, 
according  to  her  own  story),  but  as  an  advertise- 
ment of  the  enviable  condition  of  his  whiskey- 
filled  pocket-book,  fairly  sickened  me  with  sor- 
row and   disgust.     And  yet,    if  Estelle   could 
have  made  such  a  marriage  as  this^Mrs.  Wicker-  \ 
sham  had  made,  her  Aunt  andJJricle  would  have    I"" 
thought  she  had  attained  the  grandest  glory  this 
muridane  sphere  has  to  offer  woman,  and  would    / 
have  rejoiced  thereat  exceedingly. 

Estelle  returned  to  her  old  life.     Worn  out, 
tired,  discouraged  by  her  long  day's  unsuccess-    f) 

ful  tramp,  she   felt  the    noble   resolves   of  the 

l//*^ 

morning  fade_away  in  the  darkness  of  the  falling  J 

night. 

You  say  this  was  a  very  weak  girl.  I  say  she  * 
was  stronger  than  the  average,  or  she  never 
would  have  made  even  this  spasmodic  effort  to 
free  herself  from  a  position  which  she  loathed. 
It  required  no  small  amount  of  courage  to  go  to 
a  strange  house  and  ask  for  a  nurse-girl's  place. 
It  was  trying  beyond  words  to  tramp  for  a  whole 
day  from  store  to  store,  and  shop  to  shop,  and 
meet  rebuffs  at  all. 

It  seems  strange,  but  I  believe  it  to  be  strictly 
true,  that  the  persons   who  had  in  their  hands 


56  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

the  direction  of  the  life-journey  of  this  immortal 
soul,  truly  loved  her.  Nay,  I  know  this  to^  be 
true  ;  yet  I  concede  that  they  come  under  the 
head  of  those  people  who  love,  yet  have  "  a. 
mighty  queer  way  of  showing  it."  Their  efforts 
to  get  her  married  were  unselfish.  All  they 
wanted  was  her  good, -they  said.  They  had  no 
object  but  to  have  her  make  a  marriage  worthy 
her  ;  but  their  idea  of  worthiness  in  a  man  rela- 
ted principally  to  the  state  of  his  pocket.  But 
if  she  had  married  a  millionaire  they  would  not 
have  expected  nor  touched  a  dollar  of  his  in- 
come— thus  far,  they  were  noble.  Meantime 
neither  the  millionaire,  nor  the  semi-millionaire, 
nor  the  demi-semi-millionaire,  nor  even  the  non- 
millionaire  turned  up  ;  they  found  the  supporting 
of  her  weary  work  and  let  her  see  it ;  but  when 
she  suggested  doing  something  for  her  support 
— oh  no,  their  pride  forbade  that !  So  the  dead- 
lock continued.  (  She  returned  to  the  glorious 
career  of  waiting  to  be  married.^ 

"  And  I  don't  see  why  she  shouldn't  get  mar- 
ried off-hand,  if  she  was  so  beautiful,  amiable, 
and  estimable  as  you  represent  her." 

Thus  I  fancy  some  easy-going,  good-natured 
masculine  reader  saying. 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  57 

— Well,  that  is  precisely  what  her  Uncle  and 
Aunt  used  to  say. 


VII. 

A  MOST  joyous  period  to  a  girl  is  when  she 
says  good-by  to  the  trammels  of  girlhood,  and 
"  enters  life"  as  a  woman  ;  when  she  first  wakes 
to  full  consciousness  of  her  beauty ;  when  she 
begins  to  realize  the  power  of  that  beauty  over 
the  opposite  sex ;  when  she  sees  clearly  that 
beauty  is  a  crown  and  sceptre  to  its  possessor, 
and  makes  her,  while  it  lasts,  a  queen. 

I  say  "  while  it  lasts;  "  but  this  consideration 
rarely  presents  itself  to    a   girl's   mind.       She\ 
hears  sermons  preached  about  the  fleeting  char-  j 
acter  of^beauty,  but  she  does  not  apply  them  to 
herself.     She  goes  home  from  church,  looks  in 
the  glass,  sees  that  her  cheek  is  as  round  and 
her  eye  as  bright  as  they  were  six  months  ago, 
and   she   thinks    this   prognostication  dqes^npt 
apply  to  her.      It  is,  perhaps,  true  in  a  general 
way,  but  she  is  going  to  be  an  exception. 

You  tell  her  that  homely  Mrs.  Smith  yonder 

was  once  as  pretty  as  herself.     She  shrugs  her 
3* 


58  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

shoulders.  You  think  so  if  you  say  so,  but  you 
are  mistaken.  You  have  old-fogy  ideas  on  the 
subject.  You  are  arguing  from  the  ten-or- 
twenty-years-ago  point  of  view,  when  lots  of 
frumpy,  horrid  things  were  in  fashion.  And 
Mrs.  Smith's  beauty  must  have  been  of  a  piece 
with  coal-scuttle  bonnets  and  waists  up  under 
the  arm-pits. 

There  appeared  on  the  bookstalls  a  few 
years  ago  a  little  volume  called  "The  Autobi- 
ography of  a  Beauty."  The  story  in  its  pages 
was  scarcely  more  than  a  catalogue  of  the  num- 
ber of  men  whose  brain  had  been  turned  or 
fwhose  hearts  taken  captive  by  the  loveliness 
of  the  face  and  form  of  the  autobiographer. 
Duels  had  been  fought,  "knock-downs"  come 
to  pass  in  hotel  corridors  and  other  public 
places,  between  men  maddened  with  the  beauty 
of  that  face,  and  fighting  for  its  smiles. 

And  that  the  reader  might  have  some  idea 
of  what  this  face  was,  a  fine  steel  engraving  of 
it  was  placed  opposite  the  title-page. 
^  Oh,  how  entrancingly  beautiful  was  that  face ! 
It  was  the  style  of  beauty  which  we  used  to  see 
in  the  old  English  volumes  called  "  keepsakes," 
which,  full  of  engravings  of  beautiful  women, 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  59 

were  laid  on  drawing-room  tables  in  place  of 
the  photograph  albums  which  we  now  find 
there. 

But  this  face  was  so  very  lovely!  You 
scarcely  wondered  it  had  driven  men  mad. 
Soft,  loosely-twisted  brown  curls  fell  grace- 
fully on  each  oval  cheek  ;  the  fine  brow  shaded 
with  the  rippling  locks  which  strayed  carelessly 
across  it ;  the  nose  a  perfect  aquiline  ;  mouth  a 
rosebud's  self;  chin  small,  round,  firm ;  neck 
like  a  swan's  ;  shoulders  sloping  away  gradu- 
ally into  the  perfectly  moulded  arms ;  waist 
tapering  in  beautiful  symmetry  with  the  rest 
of  this  fairy-like  vision. 

I  should  not  have  been  so  minute  in  this  de- 
scription of  this  picture  if  I  had  not  something 
further  to  tell.  The  original  was  well  known 
in  New  York  and  Boston  society.  Yes,  the 
autobiographer,  the  Beauty,  walked  among  us, 
a  thing  of  life.  And  when  her  book  appeared 
with  that  title,  and  that^  picture  in  it,  such  a 
shout  of  derision  went  up  among  the  belles  of 
the  period  as  is  seldom  heard  from  lips  usually 
well  guarded  against  all  vulgar,  unrestrained 
expressions  of  emotion. 

For  the  lady  as  we  knew  her  was  enormously 


60  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

' 
stout,   her   enormously  large  waist  wider  than 

her  enormously  wide  shoulders  ;  her  face  red, 
mottled,  blotchy  ;  her  hair  dragged  off  her  ex- 
posed forehead  in  that  most  trying  of  all  fash- 
ions, a  la  Chinoise ;  her  throat  large,  full,  short; 
her  chin,  a  double  one ;  her  walk,  a  duck's 
waddle.  And  yet — will  you  believe  me? — to 
the  eye  which  looked,  the  original  of  the  picture 
was  plainly  to  be  seen  in  the  present  face. 

Every  one  knows  that  no  complexion  is  so 
easily  reddened  and  blotched  as  the  most  deli- 
cate and  fair  one ;  no  hair  breaks  and  tangles  so 
easily  as  that  which  is  soft  and  silky.  The  eyes 
were  the  same,  the  nose  was  the  same — it  was 
the  Beauty — with  her  beauty  gone. 

There  was  nothing  humorous  to  me  in  the 
sight  of  this  woman,  formerly  so  lovely.  She 
was  a  living  Sermon,  more  prophetic  than  min- 
ister ever  preached.  To  look  at  the  picture  and 
then  at  her,  was  like  looking  at  one  you  love 
lying  in  the  coffin.  To  this  complexion  you 
must  come  at  last. 

There  is  a  ghastly  picture  in  the  Wiertz  Gal- 
lery, at  Brussels,  which  I  sometimes  wish — in 
my  indignation  at  the  frivolity  of  those  girls 
who  absolutely  worship  their  own  beauty,  ay, 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan!  61 

bow  down  and  worship  it,  offer  up  incense  to  it, 
make  a  very  god  of  it— f  sometimes  wish,  I  say, 
that  I  had  power  to  invoke  this  picture  to  ap- 
pear before  me  when  I  listed,  that  I  might  hold 
it  up  to  the  view  of  these  girls  and  strike  terror 
to  their  hearts  with  it.  It  is  the  picture  of  a 
beautiful  girl  in  the  high  bloom  of  health,  her 
cheeks  glowing,  her  eyes  sparkling,  her  ruddy 
lips  parted,  coming  across  in  a  museum  the 
skeleton  of  a  girl  labelled  "  The  Beautiful 
Louise  /  "  She  stops  before  it,  and  is  contem- 
plating it  with  deep  and  solemn  thought.  Per- 
haps it  is  a  girl  she  knew ;  one  of  her  school- 
mates, it  may  be  ;  her  sister,  even.  Look  how 
the  hollow  sockets  return  her  gaze  !  See  the . 
grin  on  those  bony  jaws,  in  ghastly  mockery  of 
her  look  of  sad  interest !  They  are  both  of  a 
height,  these  two ;  the  breast  bones  of  the 
skeleton  indicate  the  same  form  of  bust  as  that 
which  is  so  admired  in  the  living  girl ;  every  ; 
bone,  every  joint,  every  articulation  is  there — 
Oh,  they  are  sisters,  if  only  in  the  sense  that  we 
are  all  members  of  ofae  family !  The  resem- 
blance between  the  two  is  perfect.  One  is  ai 
living  skeleton,  prettily  clothed  in  flesh ;  the  > 
other  is  a  dead  one,  with  its  clothing  gone. 


62  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

And  this  was  the  beautiful  Louise  !     Where  is 
her  beauty  now  ? 

I  yield  to  no  one  in  my  admiration  of  beauty, 
but  I  place  it  in  the  right  scale — far  below 
mind,  not  to  be  mentioned  beside  heart  attri- 
butes, soul  qualities. 

One  of  the  most  striking  characters  in  Dick- 
ens is  Mr.  Carker,  the  man  who  has  beautiful 
teeth.  '  Now  we  all  know  that  beautiful  teeth 
are  much  to  be  admired  for  their  mere  beauty's 
sake  ;  many  an  otherwise  handsome  face  has 
been  spoiled  by  blackened,  decayed  and  offen- 
sive teeth  ;  many  a  homely  face  with  a  large 
square  mouth  has  been  redeemed  from  positive 
ugliness  by  a  splendid  set  of  really  handsome 
I  teeth.  And  handsome  teeth  have  a  wor.th  be- 
yond  beauty;  unlike  the  fairness  of  one's  cheek, 
or  the  shade  of  one's  hair,  sound  and  handsome 
teeth  are  necessary,  to  health. 

Mr.  Carker  has  so  exaggerated  in  his  own 
mind  the  beauty  of  white  teeth,  has  fixed  so  en- 
tirely erroneous  a  value  on  the  beauty  of  good 
teeth,  that  he  goes  through  the  world  in  which 
he  moves  with  the  idea  ever  present  in  his  mind 
to  show  you  his  teeth,  his  beautiful  teeth,  his 
very-superior-to-yours  teeth,  his  worth-more- 


Get   TJicc  behind  Jlfe,  Satan  !  63 

than-any thing  in-thc-world  teeth.     It  is  a  curious  ; 
comment  on  the  value  of  his  possession  that  he 
proves  to  have  nothing  but  teeth;  his  heart  and 
character  are  worthless. 

Girls,   you   who  read  this  page,   drink   deep 
these  truisms  :   that  Beauty  is  but  skin  jilccp  ;  ' 
that  handsome  is  that  handsome  docs. 


These  inelegant  phrases  strike  you  as  forcibly 
as  nursery  rhymes  would,  perhaps  ;  yet  like 
many  of  the  latter  they  have  the  kernels  of  sound 
philosophy  beneath  their  grotesque  husks. 

Greenough  the  sculptor  told  me  that  his  ser- 
vices were  once  engaged  to  make  the  bust  of  an 
American  girl.  He  had  not  seen  her  before  she 
came  to  him  for  sittings  ;  but  her  mother  said  to 
him,  "  You'll  find  my  daughter  is  a  very  pretty 
girl,  Mr.  Greenough,  except  that  she  has  a  bad 
skin"  The  artist  naturally  thought  that  the 
.  young  girl's  skin  was  disfigured ;  pitted,  perhaps, 
or  blemished  with  some  eruption.  He  was  sur- 
prised to  find  that  her  skin  was  as  smooth  and 
as  soft  as*velvet,  but  that  it  was  yellowish  in 
tinge. 

And  remember,  Miss  Strawberry  Cream,  that 
you  cannot  long  keep  that  youthful  glow  ;  ftie 
apple  blossoms  are  more  delicate  and  fresher 


64  Get   TJicc  behind  life,  Satan  f 

/than  your  check,  yet  they  change  into  round, 
ruddy  apples — not  half  so  charming  in  a  mere 
aesthetic  sense  as  the  blossoms  were,  but  more 
\  appreciable  in  solid  value. 

A  bit  of  undigcstednbod  ;  late  hours  ;  I  know 
not  what  triviality,  may  any  day  turn  that  fresh 
rose  in  your  check  into  a  faded  one.  This  is 
making  no  allowance  for  serious  illness,  which  is 
liable  to  attack  you  as  well  as  the  next  girl,  and 
may  come  any  minute  and  change  your  whole 
appearance.  Happy  indeed  are  you  if,  when  a 
malignant  fever  strikes  you,  it  robs  you  only  of 
your  fine  complexion,  leaving  your  hearing  and 
your  eyesight  as  perfect  as  before. 

So  much  for  the  beauty  which  is  skin  deep. 

Has  it  never  happened  to  you  to  have  ac- 
quaintance with  a  person  whose  physical  beauty 
was  undoubted,  yet  who  gradually  developed 
qualities  which  aroused  your  disdain  and  disgust 
to  that  degree  that  you  shuddered  at  the  sight 
of  that  person,  and  loathed  their  very  beauty? 

For  a  magnificent  exposition  of  the  growth  of 
this  feeling,  read  "  Romola,"  by  that  gifted 
woman  "George  Eliot."  See  how  the  noble- 
minded  girl  Romola  is  fascinated  by  the  gor- 
geous beauty  of  the  youth  Tito ;  observe  how 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  65 

she  invests  him  with  all  the  lovely  attributes  of 
mind  and  heart  which  should  go  hand  in  hand 
with  such  a  winning  face  ;  follow  her  closely  as 
she  discovers  that  not  one  of  these  attributes  is 
in  reality  there ;  that  he  is  vain,  selfish  in  the  \ 
most  supreme  degree,  heartless,  fickle,  faithless,  J 
lying,  hypocritical,  and  a  traitor ;  till  at  Jength 
her  heart  closes  against  this  one  who  formerly 
lived  there,  enthroned  a  king  with  a  crown  of 
her  own  conjuring,  not  with  one  he  really  pos- 
sessed ;  and  she  shuts  him  out  forever.  His 
very  beauty  had  grown  into  ugliness  for  her. 

Thoreau  rendered  "  Handsome  is  that  hand- 
some does  "  poetically  ;  he  said, 

"We  are  all  sculptors  and  painters,  and  our 
material  is  our  own  flesh  and  blood  and  bones. 
Any  nobleness  begins  at  once  to  refine  a  man's 
features,  and  meanness  or  sensuality  to  imbrute 
them." 


VIII. 

CLARA  VERE  DE  VERE  goes  to  a  ball  to-night. 
Her  toilet  is  lovely ;  delicate  violet  and  white, 
just  the  faint  tinge  of  mourning  which  Clara  has 
put  on  for  that  uncle  of  hers  in  California  who 


66  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

died  three  months  ago  and  left  her  money. 
Clara  is  one  of  the  few  very  rich  girls  of  Amer- 
ica ;  with  large  estates  and  revenues  all  in  her 
own  right,  left  her  by  different  members  ofjthe 
rich  old  Jersey  family  to  which  she  belongs. 
Perhaps  you  think  there  is  no  disadvantage  in 
being  a.  rich  girl.  Clara  could  tell  you  her  trou- 
bles !  One  of  the  chief  among  them  is  that  she 
f  never  knows  whether  people  really  like  her,  or 
whether -they  pay  court  to  her  on  account  of  her 
V  money.  Another  is  that  if  she  wears  an  elegant 
dress  and  the  diamonds  which  are"  heirlooms  in 
the  family,  she  hears  comments  about  her  always 
wanting  to  outshine  other  girls  "  because  she's 
got  money."  If  she  wears  a  simple  dress,  folks 
say  she's  mean. 

"Did  you  ever! — a  white  tarletan  !  such  a 
rich  girl  !  Oh,  they  say  she's  awfully  stingy  ;  I 
pity  the  man  that  gets  her  !  " 

Every  artist  she  meets  expects  her  to  buy  his 
pictures  or  statues  forthwith,  because  she  has 
money.  If  she  doesn't,  again  she  is  dubbed 
"  mean."  That  she  may  not  want  them,  is 
nothing  to  the  point ;  she  might  give  them  to 
some  of  her  friends.  Tickets  for  concerts, 
church  fairs,  lectures,  piano-forte  recitals  pour 


Get   TJiee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  67 

in  by  the  score  for  her  purchasing.  If  in  any 
case  she  declines,  the  fact  is  noised  about  from 
one  aristocratic  house  to  another.  Her  defend- 
ers say  she's  eccentric  ;  her  defamers  that  she's 
stingy.  People  lean  forward  to  see  what  she 
puts  in  the  contribution-box  ;  tradesmen  double 
their  prices  when  she  sets  out  to  buy  of  them. 

Fashion  gossipers  report  her  in  print  as  enga- 
ged to  this  man  or  that.  There  is  no  privacy  for 
her  anywhere.  She  goes  to  a  watering-place, 
and  every  eye  is  on  her.  People  of  question- 
able standing  follow  her  as  she  walks,  and  stop 
when  she  stops,  to  give  lookers-on  the  impres- 
sion that  they  belong  to  her  party.  Other  peo- 
ple make  her  trumpery  presents,  expecting 
something  gorgeous  in  return  ;  and  if  she  does 
not  send  it,  they  set  to  work  to  defame  her 
again. 

Clara  is  a  coquette.  How  she  is  to  discover  ^ 
whether  a  man  truly  loves  her  or  not,  she  says 
she  does  not  know.  Meantime,  she  amuses  her- 
self with  that  most  dangerous  of  all  diversions, 
flirting.  Look  at  her  at  the  piano,  surrounded 
by  admirers  !  see  how  she  asks — with  winning 
smile — this  young  officer  to  turn  over  the  leaves 
of  her  music-book  for  her ;  and  as  soon  as  the 


68  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

leaf  is  turned,  casts  her  eyes  towards  another 
gentleman  and  sings,  gazing  at  him  pointedly 
(or  so  it  seems  to  him),  "  toi  quej'aime  !  "  Ah, 
Clara,  Clara  Vere  de  Vere,  better  let  the  foolish 
yeoman  go  !  You're  spoiled,  incurably  ;  you 
are  that  most  terrible  thing,  a  rich  coquette  ! 

But,  coquetry  thrives  in  every  circle  of  young 
^people,  and  in  every  condition  of  purse.  I 
have  seen  negresses  out  in  the  fields  planting 
cotton,  arrayed  in  pannier  overskirts  and  jockey 
hat  and  feather,  tossing  their  heads  coquettishly 
as  some  dusky  admirer  neared  the  fence. 

Here  is  our  little  friend  Susie — a  dreadfully 
coquettish  girl  oi  sixteen.  She  goes  to  school, 
daintily  clad,  tripping  along  on_ tiny  boots 
which  she  declares  don't  hurt  her — and  I 
\  suppose  she  TuTbws.  She  has  a  small  regiment 
of  admirers.  "  My  paper  collars,"  she  calls 
them.  They  are  the  boys  of  the  neighborhood 
and  range  in  their  ages  from  fifteen  to  twenty. 

"They  always  go  and  do  something  when 
they  are  twenty,"  says  Susie  ;  "  generally 
marry." 

We  ask  her  how  she  likes  that. 
/""  Oh,  I  don't  care  ;    there  are   always    new 
comers  to  fill  up  the  gaps." 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  69 

Pretty  precocious,  eh  ?  Yes,  she  is  a  girl  of 
the  period.  She'll  get  no  better. till  she  gets 
worse — that  worse  being  the  final  coquetry 
which  leads  to  a  foolish  marriage. 

Susie's  principal,  field  of  battle  is  the  side- 
walk. She  asks  permission  demurely  as  a  kitten 
of  her  mother  to  walk  up  and  down  the  side- 
walk at  dusk  with  a  girl-friend.  She  receives 
it,  and  they  start  off  so  innocently — oh,  cat's 
whiskers  and  cream,  butter  wouldn't  melt  i 
their  mouths  !  All  at  once  they  are  joined, 
first  by  this  boy,  then  by  that,  and  the  first  the 
astonished  mother  knows,  looking  out  of  the 
parlor  window,  is  that  the  two  girls  are  the  ex- 
treme centre  of  an  advancing  wing  of  a  solid 
masculine  army  which  stretches  from  curb  to 
area  gate. 

It  is  difficult  to  put  a  stop  to  an  amusement, 
a  diversion,  an  intercourse  which  seems  so 
harmless  as  this  ;  yet  such  pranks  are  dangerous. 

Why,  can  you  believe  that  our  Algie — not 
yet  fifteen — has  got  a  lot  of  notes  from  a  girl 
of  his  own  age  or  near  about,  tied  up  with 
blue  ribbon,  and  put  away  carefully  in  his  trunk 
tray  ?  I  disapprove  of  this,  but  what  can  you 
say  when  he  invites  you  to  read  them,  and 


70  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

you  find  they  are  composed  of  such  harmless 
nothings  as  \. 

DEAR  A. 

I  got  ten  for  writing  to-day ;  did  you  have  your  grammar 
lesson  ?     Yours  truly, 

LULA. 

Or  this  : 

Miss  Lula  Lawson's  comps.   to  Mr.  Algernon,  and  requests 
the  pleasure  of  his  company  at  a  party  on  her  steps  this  evening. 
N.    B.     You  are  requested  to  bring  something. 
P.    S.     Mottoes — or  anything  nice — would  be  acceptable. 

"  This  is  a  jolly  country  for  an   unmarried 
man  to   live  in,"    said  to  me  not  long  ago  a 
young  Englishman  who  had  been  in  America 
some  months,  "  because  the  girls  are  so  jolly 
"v    fond  of  flirting." 

"  Do  you  find  them  any  more  so  than  Eng- 
lish girls  ?  "  said  I,  prepared  to  wave  an  imagi- 
nary stars-and-stripes  over  his  head,  and  dare 
him  to  the  fray. 

"  Oh  yes,  you  know  ;  positively — you  mustn't 

f  feel    annoyed — young    ladies    most    delightful 

young  ladies — not   the    slightest   harm    meant, 

\   you  know  ;  quite  as  irreproachable  .as  our  Eng- 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  71 

Hsh  girls,  but  they  do  things,  you  know,  that  \ 
would  ruin  the  character  of  any  young  girl  iixx 
England." 

"  As  what,  for  instance  ?  " 

{'Why,  meet  a  fellow.") 

"What  do  you  mean  by  'meet  a  fellow  ?'  \ 
You  surely  do  not  mean  that  you  are  acquaint- 
ed with  young  girls  in  this  city,  or  this  country,    / 
who  claim  to  be  reputable,  and  yet  deliberately   , 
meet  young  men  !  " 

"Yes,  I  do.     They  don't  mean    any  harm,  \ 
and  there  is  no  harm  done.     If  they  weren't 
reputable — I  assure  you   I've  too  much  regard    I 
for  my  own  repute  to  go  and  meet  them." 

"If  such  conduct  on  the  part  of  any  girl 
were  known,  it  would  call  forth  the  severest 
comment,  I  am  sure,"  I  said,  tartly. 

"If  it  were  known   positively  that  she  had  i 
come  to  meet  me — or  rather  that  I  had  come  to  j 
meet  her — it  would   not  be  thought  right,   of 
course.      But  I  meet  her  accidentally,  so  far  as 
any  one  knows  ;    and  your  American  custom 
perrmts_girls  to  walk  the  streets  alone ;  norjdoes 
it  find  any  impropriety  in  a  gentleman's  walkirig 
home  with  her  ;  or  in  their  even  taking  a  few 
turns  up  and  down  Broadway,  or  on  the  Avenue. " 


72  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

But,  from  such  small  tricks  as  these  grow  the 
very  worst  social  sins  which  curse  our  large 
cities.  From  these  grow  the  vain,  foolish,  use- 
less wives  who  crowd  these  cities  ;  grow  many 
\  of  the  miserable  tragedies  which  spring  from 
V  such  folly  and  uselessness. 

"  If  our  girls  were  reared  on  the  French 
plan,"  said  a  lady  to  me  the  other  day,  "  these 
things  would  not  happen,  f  In  Paris,  a  girl  dare 
not  go  walking  in  the  streets  without  a  proper 
chaperon.  You  know  that,  I  presume  ?" 

"  Yes — by  personal  experience." 

""Indeed!" 

But  I  cannot  agree  that  the  way  to  remedy 

this  evil  is  to  restrict  the  liberty  of  the  girl  in  a 

matter  so  inherently  innocent  as  walking  in'the 

streets.      I    will   go    to    a    great   length    in    the 

matter   of  personal   liberty.   /What  men  may 

.pjJ    Innocently  do,  women  should  be  equally  inno- 

\        *       cent  in  doing. ) 

The  cure  for  coquetry  is  not  in  any  Rareyan 
system  of  tying  up  the  feet.  If  you  cannot 
f  approach  the  heart  of  any  American  girl  that 
lives  through  sincere  and  kindly  appeal  to  her 
sense  of  honor,  your  experience  is  sadly  dif- 
ferent from  mine. 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  73 

I  would  gladly  welcome  the  day  when  com- 
munion of  the  soul  and  mind  were  as  free 
between  men  and  women  as  it  is  now  between 
men  alone,  or  women  alone.  Indeed,  such 
communion  is  necessary,  to  pave  the  way  to  a 
truly  happy  marriage.  A  courtship  of  five 
years  .where  the  parties  have  never  seen  each 
other  except  at  church,  or  surrounded  by  the 
prim  gentilities  of  the  girl's  mother's  drawing- 
room,  is  less  likely  to  make  each  acquainted 
with  the  true  character  of  the  other,  than  see- 
ing him  or  her  subjected  to  a  month's  attrition 
out  in  the  busy  world,  and  bearing  with  or 
chafing  under  its  trying  ordeals.  » 

There  is  a  class  of  large-minded,  well-edu- 
cated unmarried  women  of  a  certain  age, 
whose  years  and  whose  talents  should  protect 
them  from  any  such  injurious  and  insulting 
comment  as  "  Guess  she's  pulling  her  cap  for 
him  ! "  when  they  see  fit  to  hold  converse — 
brief  or  lengthy — with  kindred  minds  of  the 
opposite  sex.  But,  taking  into  consideration 
what  a  large  amount  of  human  nature  there  is 
in  very  young  men  and  very  ycung  women — 
how  greatly  human  nature  predominates  over 
science,  metaphysics,  or  philosophical  deduc- 


74 


Get   Thee  bcJiind  Me,  Satan  ! 


tions  !4-I  think  it  safer  for  young  girls  to  err  on 
the  side  of  old-fashioned  maidenly  reserve. 
Therefore  I  hold  it  best  that  even  an  accidental 
meeting  between  a  young  man  and  a  young 
woman  shall  result  in  no  long  walks,  no  peram- 
bulating  of  Broadway  or  the  Avenue.  Steer 
straight  for  home,  girls,  or  say  "  Bon  jour  !" 
with^a  curtsey  to  your  cavalier,  and  continue 
your  shopping  expedition^  alone.) 


/  As  for  the  Parisian  plan  which  decrees  that 
an  unmarried  girl,  or  even  a  young  married 
woman,  shall  not  so  much  as  run  across  the 
street  without  being  accompanied  by  an  elderly 
relation,  or  a  male  or  female  servant  tagging 
behind  her,  I  look  on  it  as  a  sort  of  petty 
tyranny. 

When  I  first  went  to  Paris  I  was  a  girl  of 
eighteen,  but  I  was  perfectly  self-reliant,  and, 
knowing  enough  French  to  make  myself  under- 
stood, and  above  all  to  thoroughly  understand 
what  was  said  to  me,  it  never  entered  my  head 
that  I  needed  any  escort.  In  such  broad,  light, 
airy  and  well-guarded  streets  as  those  of  beauti- 
ful Paris,  what  need  had  any  man  or  woman  of 
an  escort  in  the  daytime  ? 


Get   Tlice  behind  Me,  Satan  /  75 

My  first  day  out  ended  in  an  adventure.  I 
had  walked  far,  and  stood  long,  looking  in  at 
the  shops  with  all  their  tempting  displays. 
Glancing  at  my  watch,  I  found  it  was  late.  I 
started  for  home. 

When  I  reached  the  Boulevards,  a  large  body 
of  soldiers  was  passing.  I  stood  and  looked  at 
them  for  some  time,  as  company  after  company 
filed  by.  As  troops,  they  were  gorgeous  ;  but 
dinner  was  a  more  attractive  prospect  at  that 
moment  I  was  tired  and  hungry.  I  wished 
they  would  pass,  and  let  me  cross  the  street ; 
the  number  seemed  indefinite ;  and  on  and  on 
they  came.  I  was  growing  desperate.  "The 
first  break  there  is,  I  will  run  across,"  I  said  to 
myself. 

Presently  there  came  a  break,  and  I  ran 
across.  The  whole  column  burst  into  laughter. 
One  man  caught  me  by  my  shawl  (they  were 
walking  fatigue-gait,  and  so  not  keeping  step) 
and  cried  out  "  Hahahaha  !  When  a  delicious- 
little-very-superior  angel  like  this  runs  in  front 
of  the  military,  they  kiss  her  !  Oh,  but  cer- 
tainly !  Else  what  good  to  be  returned  from 
the  Crimea,  with  medals  and  glory  ?  Hahahaha ! 
commencing  by  the  officers,  all  the  military, 


76  Get   Thee  beJiind  Me,  Satan  ! 

they  kiss  her.  Allons !  Let  us  commence ! 
One,  two—" 

Before  he  could  say  "  three,"  I  had  pulled  my 
shawl  from  his  grasp,  and  fled  like  the  wind  in 
the  direction  of  my  lodgings.  My  blood  was 
boiling  !  I  gasped  forth  the  story  of  my  indig- 
nity when  I  'got  home.  Old  Madame  B.  was 
there. 

"  But  the  harm  is  with  you,"  said  she.  "Man 
Dieuf"  and  her  shoulders  went  up  to  her  ears, 
"Is  it  sufficiently  incomprehensible  how  these 
foreigners  act?  My  child,  what  thou  dost  in 
thy  savage  New  York  I  know  not,  but  here,  let 
me  tell  thee,  it  is  not  convenable  for  a  little  one 
of  thy  age,  eighteen  years — Mon  Dieu,  nothing 
but  eighteen  years  ! — :to  be  walking  the  streets 
of  Paris  alone  !  The  military  naturally  supposed 
thee  a  child  of  the  people,  a  grisette,  some  little 
Nothing-at-all !  What  will  you  have  !  All  alone 
— in  the  streets  of  Paris — and  not  the  least  sus- 
picion more  aged  than  eighteen  years  ! " 

Spite  of  this  harangue,  I  could  not  make  up 
my  mind  to  sit  sucking  my  thumbs  in  a  dark 
apartment  on  glorious  sunny  days  in  beautiful 
Paris.  I  had  nothing  to  do,  and  an  escort  was 
not  to  be  had,  for  men  are  busy  as  elsewhere  in 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  77 

Paris  with  pleasure  or  profit ;  and  go  out  I 
would.  I  was  always  plainly  and  modestly 
dressed,  and  walked  along  with  the  timid,  re- 
served air  that  is  natural  to  eighteen — or  ought 
to  be. 

I  was  strolling  along  the  Rue  de  la  Paix  one 
day  when  a  price-card  on  a  necklace  in  a  shop 
caught*  my  eye.  One  hundred  arid  fifty  thou- 
sand francs  !  "  Thirty  thousand  dollars,"  I  said 
to  myself.  I  was  always  amusing  myself  jn 
changing  imaginary  francs  into  air-drawn  dollars, 
and  the  reverse.  "  Now,  who  in  the  world," 
thought  I,  "  can  afford  to  pay  thirty  thousand 
dollars  for  a  necklace  ?  " 

I  leaned  close  to  the  window-pane,  and  rivet- 
ed my  eyes  on  the  dancing  beams  of  the  great 
white  diamonds.     They  were  superb.     But  even  v 
at  that  age  I  was  too  practical  to  feel  any  desire/ 
to  possess  so  costly  a  treasure  ;  and  I  remember 
thinking — and  thinking  a  srnile  with  the  thought 
— that  if  I  had  thirty  thousand  dollars,  or  twice 
that,  no  part  of  it  should  go  to  purchasing  so 
useless  a  bauble. 

My  reveries  were  interrupted  by  a  voice — a 
voice  in  which  there  was  a  certain  quaver  which 
tells  but  one  story — age. 


78  Get  Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

"  Wouldst  thou  like  to  have  those  fine  things 
there  ?  " 

I  turned  and  saw  a  wizen-faced  old  man. 
He  was  scrupulously  dressed  in  the  highest 
fashion  ;  elegantly  gloved  ;  perfectly  booted — 
evidently  a  Frenchman  of  the  best  class  of 
society.  But  he  looked  like  a  wrinkled  dwarf 
out  of  a  fairy  tale,  to  me;  and  his  question 
chimed  with  my  fancy. 

I  looked  at  him  without  speaking.  No  one 
else  was  by.  When  I  had  surveyed  him  from 
his  face  to  his  feet  with  amazement,  and  then 
returned  from  his  feet  to  his  face  and  stared  at 
it  with  more  amazement,  he  spoke  again. 

"Because  if  thou  wouldst  desire  to  find  a 
well-beloved  dear-friend  —  oh,  but  he  would 
spoil  thee,  go  !  Some  fine  dresses,  a  cashmere 
— is  it  handsome,  a  cashmere  ? — also  to  the 
jeweler's  one  would  hasten.  •  Ah,  when  a  little 
girlette — under  twenty  I  am  sure — has  a  sweet 
.face,  the  eyes  of  an  angel,  hair  all  gilded,  it 
is  very  annoying  to  be  clad  in  an  ugly  robe 
quite  past  the  mode." 

It  was  my  best  dress,  if  you  please,  he  was 
alluding  to  in  these  complimentary  terms. 

Still  I  said  nothing.     And  perhaps  this  may 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  79 

astonish  you.  But  you  must  remember  that  I 
was  as  nearly  "thunderstruck"  as  people  gen- 
erally are,  when  they  say  they  are.  I  don't 
exactly  know  what  it  is  to  be  thunderstruck. 
Where  I  came  from  the  lightning  .strikes,  and 
the  thunder  applauds.  Else  whence  those 
"  thunders  of  applause  "  we  hear  about? 

Bear  in  mind,  too,  that  I  was  not  fluent  in 
the  language.  In  fact,  I  was  so  astonished  that 
I  couldn't  think  of  the  first  (or  last)  French 
word.  What  I  felt  like  saying  was  this  :  "  Oh, 
you  red-faced,  old,  white-headed  scamp!  you 
ugly,  frightful,  French,  frog-eating  dandy!  ain't 
you  ashamed  of  yourself,  trying  to  make  a  fool 
of  me,  you  absurd  old  Mephistophelean  Faust, 
you  ! " 

Those  being  my  sentiments,  I  naturally  found 
some  difficulty  in  expressing  them. 

Will  you  believe  that  this  old  pest — a  Dec- 
orated of  the  Legion  of  Honor,  he  told  me, 
proudly  pointing  to  the  ribbon  in  his  button- 
hole— who  made  remarks  on  my  best  gown — 
actually  cost  me  two  francs  ? 

Yes,  I  had  to  take  a  cab  to  get  rid  of  him. 
He  walked  after  me.  Oh,  I  was  savage  ! 
When  he  found  I'd  beckoned  to  a  cab,  with 


80  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

true  French  politeness  he  sprang  and  opened 
the  door.  I  shut  it  after  me  with  a  bang,  and 
leaning  out  I  cried,  half  choked  with  angry  tears, 

"  Oh,  you  nasty  old  thing  !  " 

Perhaps  thinking  I  was  bestowing  some  part- 
ing words  of  politeness  upon  him,  he  waved  his 
hat  above  his  head  with  a  graceful  swing ; 
and  the  last  I  heard  he  was  calling  on  the 
Virgin  to  protect  me,  and  reminding  me  that 

fine  clothes  were  handsomer  than  old  ones,  and 

• 
that  he  himself  was  none  other  than  Monsieur  le 

Baron  de  Croquemitaine,  ancient  Officer,  Dec- 
orated of  the  Legion  of  Honor. 

If  I  did  not  speak  of  this  episode  at  home,  it 
was  because  I  believed  that  both  of  these  ad- 
ventures were,  purely  accidental,  and  that  they 
were  no  index  of  what  must  inevitably  happen 
to  a  young  woman  walking  the  streets  of  Paris 
alone. 

Shortly  after  this  I  was  walking  with  my  guar- 
dian. At  the  Church  of  the  Madeleine  he 
prepared  to  leave  me  ;  he  was  going  to  his  club, 
I  to  visit  the  family  of  the  excellent  Monsieur 
Vattemare.  Oh,  that  lovely  French  home  ! 
Oh,  the  superb  old  man  Vattemare,  enthusias- 
tic in  his  efforts  to -establish — that  which  he  did 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  Si 

establish— an  International  Book  Exchange  with 
America,  thus  filling  Boston  public  libraries 
with  priceless  volumes !  Oh,  the  dear  old 
mother  !  fat  and  happy,  working  worsted  on 
canvas,  as  it  seemed,  forever.  Oh,  the  curious 
AbbZ  son,  and  the  loving,  amiable  daughters, 
my  companions  !  Were  Parisian  sins  and  follies 
fifty  times  more  prominent  and  ghastly  than  they 
are,  the  recollection  to  me  of  that  one  peaceful, 
calm,  happy  home  were  enough  to  nullify  with 
its  virtue  and  goodness  all  their  evil. 

My  guardian  had  no  more  than  taken  a  step 
or  two  away  from  me  when  behold  the  same 
'wizen-faced  old  man  who  had  so  excited  my  in- 
dignation in  the  Rue  de  la  Paix. 

"  Ah  ha !  Once  again  the  good  Virgin 
throws  us  together,  Sainted  Marie  be  praised  !  " 

That  was  enough.  I  turned  and  ran  as  fast 
as  my  feet  would  carry  me,  and  caught  up  with 
my  guardian,  who  had  turned  a  corner. 

Of  course  he  was  furious ;  and  after  that  in- 
sisted that  I  should  have  a  man-servant. 

The  duty  of  this  personage,  who  was  easily 
found,  at  a  high  salary,  was  to  walk  behind  me  ; 
and  when  he  did  so  no  one  ever  spoke  to  me, 
or  treated  me  otherwise  than  with  the  highest 


82  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

deference.  That  cockade  and  those  white 
gloves  ;  that  black  suit  and  that  fine  straight 
figure,  were  very  effective  upon  observers  ;  but 
they  bored  me  terribly  sometimes. 

In  the  first  place,  as  I  was  a  foreigner,  Pierre 
seemed  to  feel  it  necessary  to  point  out  for  my 
observation  and  admiration  buildings  with  which 
I  was  entirely  familiar.  Walking  along  about 
two  yards  in  front  of  him,  I  would  hear  a  voice 
crying  "  Madame  !  Madame  !  " 

"  What  is  it?"  I  would  say  turning  quickly, 
expecting  something  important  had  occurred. 

"Madame  will  be  pleased  to  observe  that  this 
is  the  magnificent  church  of  the  Madeleine.  It 
takes  eight  men  with  outspread  arms  to  com- 
pass one  of  those  pillars.  It  is  modelled  after 
a  Grecian  temple.  Inside- — " 

"  Thank  you,  Pierre.  I  am  perfectly  acquain- 
ted with  the  church  of  the  Madeleine." 

Sometimes  I  would  look  behind  me,  and  find 
that  he  was  missing.  On  such  occasions  I 
would  stand  still,  looking  about  me  anxiously, 
wondering  if  the  earth  had  opened  and  swal- 
lowed him,  when  presently  he  would  come 
rushing  out  of  a  wine-shop  near  by,  his  cockaded 
hat  a  little  set  on  one  side,  and  his  irreproach- 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  83 

able  white  gloves  slightly  soiled  at  the  finger- 
tips. 

"  Mon  Dieu  !  "  he  would  cry,  with  the  most 
innocent  expression  of  face,  "why,  where  could 
Madame  have  escaped  herself?  " 

1  could  hear  him  tell  other  servants  whom  he 
met,  and  with  whom  he  exchanged  a  word,  that 
I  was  "  Madame  la  Marquise;  "  sometimes  my 
rank  would  take  a  leap,  and  I  would  be 
"Madame  la  Duchesse ; "  and  once,  when  I 
had  an  expensive  new  outfit,  it  was  "  Madame 
la  Princesse  "  whom  he  had  the  honor  to  serve. 


IX. 

SPEAKING   of    expensive   outfits,    have   you\ 
ever  visited   Long  Branch,  and  seen  the  over^ 
dressed  little   girls  whom   injudicious    mothers 
thrust  into  the  parlors  in  the  evening  at  that  / 
vulgar  place  ?     Is  it  not  a  painful  sight  ? 

One  summer  there  was  one  child  whom  I 
observed  particularly.  She  was  an  exceedingly 
plump  girl  of  about  twelve  or  thirteen,  and  her 
bedizenings  were  worthy  of  a  duchess.  Her 
hose  were  silk,  her  boots  were  of  delicate  satin 


84  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

or  gilded  leather,  her  dress  was  of  rose  or  blue 
taffetas  covered  with  Valenciennes  lace ;  her 
jewels  were  coral  or  turquoise ;  her  flowing 
hair  was  artificially  crimped ;  (her  full  bosom 
and  plump  arms  were  bare)  her  lower  limbs 
were  exposed  like  a  ballet-dancer's)  Every 
evening  her  truly  idiotic  mother  saw  this  infant 
sailing  through  delirious  waltzes  in  the  arms  of 
an  extremely  tall  officer  of  at  least  twenty-five, 
and  instead  of  trembling  at  the  sight,  smiled 
complacently  at  the  proud  knowledge  that,  so 
far  as  dress  was  concerned,  her  daughter  quite 
literally  outstripped  the  other  children  present. 

And  it  is  easy  to  observe  that  these  noble 
feelings  already  have  large  place  in  the  little 
girl's  throbbing  bosom.  Her  eyes— fringed 
around  with  black  streaks  of  dissipations-flash 
with  delight  as  she  observes  the  undoubted 
superiority  of  her  toilet. 

Her  manners  are  offensively  presuming.  In 
a  quadrille  for  which  grown  people  are  taking 
their  places,  she  spies  a  position  which  suits 
her  fancy,  and  rushing  up  to  it  edges  those 
who  occupy  it  away. 

/     She   poisons  the  whole  atmosphere    of  girl- 
1  dom.      All  the  other *children   must   have  silk 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  85 

hose  and  gilded  boots ;  if  they  haven't  they 
envy  the  wearer,  and  imitate  her  ways  as  nearly 
as  possible.  She  coquets  with  the  tall  officer 
whose  sword-belt  is  higher  than  her  head  ;  she 
giggles  behind  her  fan  ;  gives  a  boy  of  fifteen 
a  rose  out  of  her  bosom  ;  and,  over  there  in  a 
corner,  a  grown  man  is  showing  her  tiny  glove 
(which  she  has  given  him)  to  some  ladies  who' 
laugh. 

She  is  the  subject  of  conversation  between 
a  couple  behind  me.  They  are  French,  and 
speak  in  that  language. 

"  Elle  sera  sgduite  /"  says  the  man.y — " ~* 

"  Undoubtedly,"  answers  the  woman. 

What  a  comment  on  the  harmless  pranks  of 
a  girl  of  thirteen !  I  turn  and  look  at  the 
speakers.  They  are  a  distinguished  and  ele- 
gant couple.  They  are  judging  her  coolly, 
calmly — but  from  the  French  stand-point,  I  am 
convinced,  and  so  I  take  the  liberty  to  turn  and 
tell  them. 

"  Our  American  manners  are  quite  different 
from  the  European." 

"  That  is  evident !  "  says  the  lady  pointedly. 

"  This  young  girl,  I  trust,  will  grow  to  woman- 
hood, judge  for  herself  the  qualities  of  the  men 


86  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

she  meets,  choose  a  husband,  marry  and  live  a 
virtuous  wife." 

"  Have  we  the  honor  to  speak  to  a  friend  of 
her  family?  " 

"  No.  I  do  not  know  who  her  family  is,  not 
even  their  name." 

"  She  is  a  daughter  of  the  celebrated  gam- 
bler X.,"  says  the  man,  twirling  his  moustache. 

•i 

"  One  is  not  a  saint.  One  has  lost  many  little 
hundreds  at  his  faro." 

A  gambler's  daughter  !  In  the  olden  time 
to  be  the  daughter  of  a  gambler  would  have 
ben  considered  a  position  of  moral  and  social 
death.  But  it  seems  we  have  changed  all  that. 
She  is  the  head  of  this  circle  of  children,  the 
queen  of  the  set,  and  is  followed  by  the  children 
of  people  bearing  honorable  names.  The 
modest  and  pretty  daughter  of  the  President 
of  the  United  States  is  standing  there  in  the 
group  with  her.  Her  gambler  lineage  seems 
to  be  no  great  drawback. 

In  dress  as  in  most  other  things  the  extremes 
are  not  admirable.  While  gamblers'  wives  and 
daughters  (though  by  no  means  these  alone 
among  our  women)  occupy  the  one  extreme, 
they  are  quite  as  near  my  idea  of  the  desirable 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  87 

in  dress  as  are  those  self-styled  reformers  who 
would  sacrifice  all  the  graces  of  attire  on  the 
altar  of  their  ism — even  as  the  free-lovers  would 
sacrifice  the  graces  of  home  on  the  altar  of  their 
ism  ;  the  difference  being  strongly  against  these 
latter,  of  course,  who  are  shamelessly  wicked, 
as  well  as  aesthetically  unlovely. 

If  I  pity  the  little  girl  who  has  a  rash  and 
foolish  mother  who  permits  her  to  be  dressed 
as  the  gambler's  child  was  dressed,  I  also  pity 
the  little  girl  who  has  a  too  timid  and  rigid- 
minded  mother  by  whom  all  elegance  in  dressV 
is  tabooed. 

With  all  our  love  for  the  little  ones,  we  think  ; 
too  little   of  their   small   world   and   its  ways. 
Your  world   of  trials,  troubles,   anxieties,  jeal- 
ousies, fears,  hopes,  and  joys  has  its  little  coun-| 
terpart  in  the  child-world  in  which  your  daugh-1 
ter  lives.     If  you  think  she  is  a  creature  without 
emotion  you   are    much  mistaken.      She    lives, 
she  breathes,  she  feels,  she   likes,  she  dislikes  ;  i 
be  satisfied  if  you  can   keep  her  back  for  a  few 
years  from  those  masterful  passions,  loving  and 
hating.     Let  her  dress  be  neat  and  clean,  and 
to   some   extent   at   least,   near   the   prevailing 
fashion.      These    things    lie   deep   in '  many   a 


88  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

child's  soul.  Ridicule  in  the  mouths  of  children 
is  to  other  children  so  bitter,  so  unsparing  ! 

I  remember  when  I  was  a  girl,  and  going  to 
school,  that  the  cape  of  my  new  sun-bonnet  by 
a  mistake  was  made  too  long,  and  my  mother 
tore  off  a  few  inches  of  it,  and  then  sat  down  to 
hem  it  up  again  for  me.  But  before  she 
"stuck  the  first  stitch"  she  was  called  away. 
For  three  days  there  was  confusion  in  the 
house  ;  sickness,  departures,  arrivals  ;  the  hem- 
ming of  my  sun-bonnet  was  quite  a  long  job  ; 
no  sewing-machines  in  those  days ;  and  for 
three  days  I  wore  that  unhemmed  sun-bonnet 
to  school.  It  seemed  to  me  I  never  was 
"mad"  and  "didn't  speak"  so  frequently  in 
my  whole  school  life  as  during  those  three 
days  ;  and  the  hole  in  my  armor  being  the 
lack  of  hem  to  my  sun -bonnet,  the  girls 
speedily  found  it  out,  and  thrust  their  dag- 
gers in  it. 

"Ahh!  What  a  sun-bonnet!  Why  don't 
somebody  hem  your  sun-bonnet  ?  Eh  ?  '  Father 
sick,  sister  gone  away,  and  mother  hasn't  got 
time  ! '  Then  why  don't  you  wear  your  flat  ? 
'  Haven't  got  a  flat !  '  Say,  girls  !  She  hasn't 
got  any  flat !  " 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  89 

Chorus  of  voices,  and  fingers  outnumbering 
those  of  the  witches  in  Macbeth  pointed  to- 
wards me  in  derision. 

"  Ehh  !  No  flat !  Why  what  do  you  wear 
on  Sundays  ?  Why  don't  your  mother  buy 
you  a  flat  ?  I  guess  it's  because  she's  too  poor — 
ehh!" 

With  that  the  sun-bonnet  was  snatched  off 
my  head,  and  flung  from  girl  to  girl  with 
laughter  and  contempt. 

My  darling  mother  never  knew  what  I  endur- 
ed through  that  sun-bonnet.  She  will  learn  the 
story  of  it  for  the  first  time  from  these  pages. 
She  hemmed  it  calmly  when  she  got  time,  and 
I  am  thankful — for  it  is  strange  how  well  I  re- 
collect every  detail  of  this  trifling  circumstance 
- — that  I  forbore  to  tell  her  all  I  suffered. 

This  lesson  is  clear  :  never  force  your  child  \ 
to   wear   a   garment  which  she  has   reason    to  I 
believe  will  bring  her  into  ridicule  with  the  little ' 
world  by  which  she  is  surrounded.      If  you  will 
not  buy  nor  make  her  something  similar  to  what 
other  little  girls  are  wearing,   she  must  needs 
wear  the  obnoxious  clothing,  for  she  cannot  go 
naked.     She   is   in  your  hands ;    you  are  her 
mistress  ;  she  your  slave  ;  but  she  will  chafe  un- 


9O  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  f 

der  your  proprietorship  as  all  bondmen  do,  and 
will  count  the  hours  till  the  time  when  she  shall 
be  a  free  agent. 

This  brings  me  to  a  subject  on  which  I  have 
already  spoken  and  written  quite  freely,  but 
about  which  there  is  always  a  word  to  say. 
I  mean  the  question,  What  shall  a  woman 
wear  ? 

The  women  who  as  many  as  twenty-five 
years  ago  set  on  foot  the  movement  which 
claimed  suffrage  as  a  woman's  right,  made,  it 
has  always  seemed  to  me,  a  vital  mistake  when 
they  associated  that  movement  with  eccentric 
notions  of  dress.  Grant,  for  argument's  sake, 
that  the  dress  they  desired  to  introduce  to 
supersede  the  one  which  for  centuries  had 
been  in  vogue  among  women,  was  beautiful, 
useful,  economical,  healthful,  and  appropriate  ; 
argument  aside  and  truth  to  the  front,  it  was 
only  a  few  of  these  things.  It  was  called,  you 
remember,  the  Bloomer  costume.  The  excel- 
lent Mrs.  Bloomer,  with  whom  I  have  the 
pleasure  of  being  acquainted,  denies  with  some 
warmth  having  been  its  originator.  She  says 
other  persons  devised  it  and  wore  it,  long  before 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,   Satan  !  91 

she  ever  thought  of  it ;  but  believing  it  to  be  a 
wise  reform  she  advocated  it  in  the  columns  of 
a  newspaper  she  was  then  publishing,  and  by 
this  means  her  name  got  tacked  to  it. 

It  is  an  undoubted  fact  that  many  women 
spend  much  more  time  and  money  on  their 
clothing  than  they  can  afford.  It  cannot  be 
denied  that  many  fashions,  pretty  enough  in 
themselves,  have  been  exaggerated  by  women  of 
poor  judgment,  fond  of  outre  styles,  until  they 
have  become  offensive  to  the  eye  of  taste.  But 
even  at  their  worst  the  dresses  now  worn  are 
less  ungainly,  less  unsightly,  more  poetic,  more 
modest  even,  than  the  stiff,  hard-lined,  cast- 
iron  Bloomer  costume.  Scarcely  a  day  passes 
that  we  do  not  hear  or  read  some  denunciation 
of  woman's  dress,  its  absurdity,  its  extravagance 
both  to  eye  and  p*bcket ;  but  the  truth  is  there 
never  was  a  pefiod  when  so  many  sensible  ideas 
were  carried  out  in  the  clothing  of  women  as  at 
present. 

I  trust  that  it  is  something  more  than  a  fleet- 
ing fashion  which  decrees,  as  it  does  at  the  pre- 
sent writing,  that  tight-lacing  is  old  style,  passe 
de  mode,  notjto  be  thought  of  by  a  woman  who    / 
pretends  to  fashion ;  that  women's  boots  shall 


92  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

have  thick  soles,  and  a  heel  which  lifts  them 
out  of  the  mud  or  snow. 

Not  many  years  ago  nobody  but  grandmother 
wore  a  dress  the  waist  of  which  closed  and  opened 
in  front  ;  then  every  woman  in  the  house — ex- 
cept Gran'ma — from  the  girl  five  years  old  to  the 
mother  of  the  same,  with  daughters  of  all  ages 
intervening,  had  to  be  "hooked  up."  And 
what  a  process  it  was !  I  have  hooked  the 
dresses  of  my  elder  sisters  and  those  of  my  girl 
friends  when  my  fingers  have  ached  for  an  hour 
after.  As  for  the  victim,  she  was  as  red  as  a 
lobster  while  the  process  was  under  way. 
"  Hold  your  breath  !"  was  the  common  injunc- 
tion from  the  hooker  to  the  hooked.  Without 
bated  breath  there  was  no  such  thing  as  drag- 
ging together  these  monstrous  instruments  of 
torture.  Very  frequently  hodks  and  eyes  burst 
off  during  the  strain,  and  then  a  slovenly  sight 
often  met  the  gaze.  Underwear — sometimes 
not  too  clean,  for  women  had  not  the  facility 
for  making  these  garments  then  as  now — was  to 
be  seen  gaping  through  the  crevices  between 
the  hooks.  No  woman  could  dress  without  aid ; 
sometimes  the  men  folks  of  the  family  had  to 
be  called  in.  Their  strength  generally  sue- 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  93 

ceeded  in  this  pleasing  work  when  every 
woman  in  the  house — servants  included,  often 
called  away  from  the  wash-tub  to  hook  up 
madam  and  enable  her  to  show  herself — had 
tried  and  failed.  "  I've  got  weak  wrists  ;  my 
fingers  aren't  strong  ;"  these  were  the  excuses 
heard. 

Contrast  this  with  the  easy-fitting  waist-body 
of  to-day,  buttoned  up  the  front  in  two  minutes 
by  the  fingers  of  the  wearer.  Shall  this  im- 
provement go  unnoticed  ? 

And  the  shoes  worn  by  women  in  that  period 
—  you  remember  them,  I  suppose?  Paper- 
soled  gaiters,  laced  at  the  sides,  the  uppers 
made  of  some  rotten  stuff — prunella,  was  it  not 
called  ? — leather  was  seldom  or  never  used  for 
women's  shoes.  Heelless,  the  woman's  foot 
sprawled  ungracefully  as  she  set  it  to  earth, 
and  a  week  or  two's  wear  burst  the  eyelet- 
holes  of  the  boots,  and  the  untidy  view  from 
the  exploded  hooks  in  the  dress-body  was  re- 
peated on  the  inside  of  each  foot. 

And  who  can  compute  the  number  of  early 
deaths  which  have  been  caused  by  these  two 
follies  !  Many  a  woman  has  dropped  dead  from 
tight-lacing ;  and  many  and  many  another  has 


94  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

/Bragged  on  a  miserable  existence  for  a  few 
years  to  die  of  consumption  at  last,  from  only 
one  drenching  received  when  she  was  wearing 
these  paper-soled  shoes. 

I  have  seen  women  come  home  after  being 
caught  in  a  rainstorm  so  wet  you  could  wring 
them ;  their  dresses  dabbled  a  half  a  yard 
high,  and  flapping  about  their  heels  ;  their 
shoes  so  saturated  that  water  exuded  from  them 
at  every  step.  If  the  water-proofing  process 
was  known  then  it  was  not  applied  to  women's 
cloaks.  To  carry  an  umbrella  was  considered 
an  unheard-of  clumsiness  by  dainty  belles  in 
the  good  old  days,  when,  according  to  some 
authorities,  "women  used  to  dress  sensibly." 
In  this  summer  of  1872  not  a  fashionable 
woman  walks  the  streets  whose  parasol  is  not 
equal  to  affording  her  shelter  in  case  of  a  rain- 
storm. Of  course,  also-,  it  is  a  far  better  pro- 
tection on  hot  days  than  the  trumpery  "  sun- 
shade," about  as  large  as  a  dinner-plate,  which 
used  to  be  in  vogue. 

Away  back  further  than  the  days  I  speak  of, 
— before  America  was  settled  by  civilization's 
women,  in  Elizabeth's  reign,  and  before  that, 
too, — if  you  examine  the  costumes  of  fashion- 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  g$ 

able  women  you  will  find  nothing  so  practical, 
so  comfortable,  so  commonsensical,  as  the  dress 
worn  by  such  women  to-day. 

The  pannier  and  the  chignon  have  been 
carried  to  excess  ;  but  a  draped  overskirt  is  a 
feature  in  Greek  statuary  and  Roman  painting. 
Next  to  her  elocution,  Rachel,  the  tragedienne, 
gave  her  most  studious  attention  to  the  fall  of 
her  drapery.  And  the  heads  of  women  are 
tidier  far  to-day  than  when — like  that  of  Rogue 
Riderhood's  daughter  —  their  loosely  twisted 
back  hair  was  forever  tumbling  down. 

"  The  waterfall  and  the  hoop-skirt  are  to  a 
certain  degree  unshakable  successes ;"  said  a 
merchant  to  me  recently  ;  "  and  it  is  so  because 
their  utility  is  undoubted.  With  the  first,  a 
lady's  hair  is  dressed  in  five  minutes  and  stays 
so  all  day  ;  putting  her  bonnet  on  and  off  does 
not  disarrange  her  hair.  This  you  see  is  a 
great  point.  And  the  hoop-skirt  does  away 
with  the  number  of  starched  muslin  skirts  which 
must  otherwise  be  worn  to  give  a  graceful  con- 
tour to  the  dress.  Of  course,  such  skirts  are 
both  heavy  and  expensive,  and  therefore  unde- 
sirable." 

As  I  don't  wear  a   waterfall   myself,    I    can 


g6  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

champion  the  thing  without  being  suspected 
of  selfish  motives.  I  grant  some  waterfalls  be 
hideous — but  there  are  some  women  who  have 
a  talent  for  making  anything  hideous ;  and 
therefore  that  is  no  argument  against  a  good 
thing. 

Were  I  a  luxury-lapped  lady,  with  nothing 
better  to  do  than  to  keep  myself  sweetly  beautiful 
— to  trim  my  eyebrows,  and  bathe  my  lips  in 
lavender  water,  and  play  the  role  of  a  mermaid 

"With  a  comb  and  a  glass  in  her  hand,  in  her  hand," 

I  should  like  very  much  to  sit  combing  my 
"long  hair"  by  the  hour,  of  lazy 'afternoons. 
But  as  I  am  a  woman  with  something  to  do, 
and  for  at  least  half  the  year  am  rushing  about 
the  country,  getting  up  at  unearthly  hours  in 
the  morning,  bowling  over  hundreds  of  miles  of 
railway  every  day,  and  all  the  time  under 
vigilant  observation  by  those  critics  of  literary 
women  who  are  on  the  look-out  for  signs  of 
untidiness  —  I  sometimes  grow  weary  of  my 
back-hair  and  sigh  for  a  chignon.  In  wild 
moments  I  dream  of  cutting  off  my  hair 
£  la  Never-mind-who,  and  joining  the  noble 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  97 

army  of  the   short-haired.       But  the  chignon 
dwells  most  in  my  mind. 

Here  comes  Rebecca.  Let  us  see  in  what 
way  reform  could  go  to  work  at  her  costume. 
She  is  dressed  in  the  freshest  of  half-mourning 
suits;  the  underskirt  just  clears  the  ground  all 
around  and  is  quite  plain ;  the  overskirt  is 
gracefully  raised  on  the  sides,  and  the  folds 
thus  made  are  fixed  in  place  with  dainty 
rosettes  of  the  same  material;  the  waist  is 
fastened  with  buttons  up  the  front,  and  is  so 
loose  that  as  she  heaves  a  deep,  life-giving 
breath  Rebecca  declares  that  it  "  don't  touch,/ 
her  anywhere."  A  dainty  frill  or  ruff  of  snowy 
tarletan  encircles  her  throat.  Her  dark  hair, 
with  just  a  few  threads  of  gray  in  it,  is  rolled 
over  two  hair-pads  which  make  a  fine  back- 
head,  as  the  artists  call  it.  Across  her  brow  a 
coronet  braid  is  laid,  and  is  vastly  becoming. 
This  false  hair  is  one  of  the  things  you  rail 
against ;  but  dear  Rebecca  is  one  of  the  staid- 
est  and  soberest  of  women,  and  she  approves 
of  these  harmless  little  adjuncts.  We  mention 
Bloomer  costume  to  her  ;  she  raises  her  eyes  in 
horror.  "That,"  she  says,  "would  really  be 


p8  •          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

the  absurdity — the  vagary — not  what  we  wear 
at  present." 

Do  you  urge  that  this  costume  of  Rebecca's 
may  be  pretty,  but  it  is  expensive  ?  It  is  a 
/common  black  and  white  calico.  There  is  no 
1  cheaper  wear  for  women.  It  was  made  by  a 
dressmaker  with  no  reputation  for  style  who 
lives  in  the  Sixth  Avenue,  and  is  cheap.  The 
neck-ruff  was  made  by  Rebecca  herself  in  ten 
minutes  time.  For  fifty  cents  she  bought 
enough  tarletan  to  carpet  our  back  yard.  She 
will  make  ruffs  for  herself  and  for  all  of  us — she 
will  draw  out  ruffs  no  more  countable  than  the 
eggs  from  a  conjurer's  hat.  She  will  wear 
that  calico  dress  this  summer  without  washing — 
next  summer  with  frequent  washings — and  the 
next  summer — well,  it  will  not  be  wasted,  be 
sure  of  that.  She  will  use  it  herself  in  the 
early  morning  when  she  is  dusting  the  knick- 
nacks  in  the  parlor,  or  perhaps  she  will  give  it 
away,  nicely  mended,  perfectly  wearable,  to 
some  poor  woman  or  girl.  And  remember,  that 
during  this  summer  at  least,  and  if  it  doesn't 
get  too  much  faded  the  next  also,  she  will 
put  on  that  dress  and  with  a  neat  black  bonnet 
and  a  pair  of  black  gloves  and  her  black  parasol 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  99 

she  will  "walk  dat  Broadway  down"  without 
the  least  compunction  ;  proving  once  more  and 
in  spite  of  all  cavil  that  this  is  the  age  of  true 
freedom  in  dress,  when  Rebecca's  black  calico 
may  pass  muster  perfectly  well  on  the  gayest 
street  in  the  world,  and  excite  not  the  least 
sneer  or  other  comment  though  it  jostle  silks 
and  grenadines  innumerable  on  the  way. 

There    may   be   persons   who    say   that   the 
Bloomer  costume  was  invented — not  in   these 
days  when  women's  dress  is  more  sensible  than 
formerly — but  in  those  very  other  days  of  which 
I  have  been  speaking  when  women  laced__their] 
lives  away,  and  for  the  sake  of  small  feet  wore  ^ 
dea^lv-dealing,  paper-soled  gaiters. 

But  the  railing  against  dress  still  goes  on  ;  it 
is  a  never-ceasing  source  of  complaint.  I  can- 
not believe  the  objections  raised  then  were  any 
stronger  than  they  are  now. 

"Now  just  see  how  lovely  Lucretia  Mott 
dresses  !  "  said  a  dress-reform  woman  of  past 
fifty  to  a  peaches-and-creamy  girl  of  eighteen  in 
my  presence.  "  She  dresses  sensible.  Why 
don't  you  dress  like  her  ?  " 

The  idea  of  the  mob-cap  and  poke-bonnet  of 
Lucretia  Mott — a  semi-angelic  Quakeress  of 


TOO          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

seventy  years  of  age — on  the  head  of  this  rosy 
springy,  merry,  light-hearted  girl  of  eighteen 
who  didn't  hesitate  to  sleep  in  the  martyrdom 
of  curl-papers  for  the  sake  of  having  ringlets  the 
next  day,  and  who  spent  a  great  deal  of  her 
loose  change  in  buying  black  velvet  ribbons  to 
tie  about  her  throat  to  set  off  the  whiteness 
thereof — was  so  ludicrous  that  both  the  girl  and 
I  laughed. 

"  Oh,  all  the  world  knows  how  frivolous  you 
be  in  regard  to  dress,  Olive  Logan,"  said  the 
elder  lady,  tartly. 

My  frivolity  in  regard  to  dress  may  be  plainly 
stated  as  a  settled  belief,  that  so  long  as  Youth 
is  beautiful,  joyous,  undimmed  by  care — and 
pray  God  that  youth  may  be  always  thus,  for 
manhood  and  womanhood  cannot  be  ! — so  long 
as  the  savage  woman  gazes  admiringly  at  her- 
self and  twists  bright  beads  in  her  locks  and 
watches  the  charming  reflection  of  herself  in  the 
brook  ;  so  long  as  civilization's  girls  have  ad- 
vanced no  further  from  the  condition  of  the  sav- 
age woman  than  to  look  upon  a  mirror  as  an 
essential  part  of  the  furniture  of  their  rooms 
(black  Sarah  Hoggins  required  a  looking-glass 
in  the  kitchen  as  well  as  her  bedroom) ;  so  long 


Get   Thee  behind  Me-,  Satan  !          101 

as  Blondina  knows  that  blue  becomes  her,  and 
Brunetta  prefers  a  delicate  yellow — so  long  will 
Bloomer  costume  reforms,  and  Quaker  bonnet 
reforms,  fall  on  arid  soil  where  fruit  cannot  and 
will  not  spring  up. 

The  Friends  know  this  well  enough,  and  to 
their  sorrow.  It  is  not  the  pure  and  beautiful 
religious  doctrine  inculcated  by  these  really  good 
and  lovely  people  which  drives  away  hundreds 
of  their  youth  every  year.  It  is  the  austerity  of 
their  laws  concerning  that  which  touches  the  aes- 
thetic faculties  of  every  human  heart.  It  is  the 
lack  of  music,  of  sweet  pictures,  graceful  statu- 
ary, harmless  humorous  books  and  conversa- 
tion ;  and  it  is  also  the  rigorous  decree  which 
forbids  the  wearing  of  raiment  tinged  with  the 
hues  which  God  painted  on  the  rose  and  dyed 
deep  in  the  violet  eyes  of  the  daisy. 

Yes,  the  woman-suffrage  women  made  a  vital 
mistake  in  joining  on  to  a  movement  which  re- 
lated specially  to  the  social  and  intellectual  status 
of  woman  a  side  issue — more  prominent  because 
more  tangible,  more  immediately  to  be.  put  in 
practice,  than  suffrage — which  related  to  such  a 
comparatively  trivial  matter  as  the  cut  of  her 


IO2  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

clothing.  Fancy  a  political  party  of  men  which 
should  urge  as  a  prominent  plank  in  its  platform 
the  abolition  of  stove-pipe  hats  and  the  substi- 
tution therefor  of  good  sensible  sun-bonnets  ! 
This  is  an  idea  I  have  frequently  made  use  of  in 
speaking  to  audiences  on  this  subject,  and  it 
•  never  fails  to  excite  laughter  and  applause, 
called  forth  I  suppose  by  the  ludicrousness  of 
the  simile.  Yet  I  put  it  on  record  here  as 
the  first  and  perhaps  best  parallel  which  comes 
to  my  mind  for  the  efforts  of  reformers  who 
want  to  link  "  dress  reform  "  and  the  ballot  for 
woman.  This  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  I  per- 
sonally was  never  fond  of  dress,  and  am  growing 
less  and  less  so  every  day.  Yet  I  know  well 
enough  how  to  enter  into  the  feelings  of  a  girl 
of  sixteen  ;  and  if  I  can  succeed  in  putting  into 
the  mind  and  heart  of  that  girl  noble  ideas  of 
woman's  duty  in  life,  higher  aims  than  gossip 
and  ball-going,  an  earnest  appreciation  of  her 
worth  as  a  soulful  heir  to  immortality,  queen  of 
the  household  on  earth,  a  power  in  church  and 
state,  I  may  well  afford  to  leave  her  her  pink 
muslin  dress  and  her  Roman  scarf.  I  shall  do 
violence  to  her  instincts,  if  so  please  you,  in  no- 
thing ;  and  I  challenge  you  to  try  your  plan  with 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          103 

a  dozen  girls  while  I  try  mine  with  another  dozen, 
and  if  yours  haven't  all  run  away  I  warrant  me 
they'll  be  as  fine  a  party  of  female  Uriah  Heeps 
as  were  ever  turned  out  to  disgust  a  practical, 
frank  world  with  their  hypocritical  "so  umbles ! " 
so  little  fond  of  dress,  so  unselfish,  so  self-abne- 
gating, so  far  removed  from  any  of  the  wicked 
pleasures  of  this  sinful  world,  so  unlike  in  fact 
what  youth,  beauty,  health  and  high  spirits 
should  be — and  what,  thank  Heaven  they  are  ! 
spite  of  Bloomerites  and  other  unlovely  angu- 
larities. 


X. 

I  SOMETIMES  hear  women  in  small  towns  and 
villages  and  in  the  country  say — "John  and  I 
were  in  New  York  last  spring  and  stopped  at 
the  Greatenormous  Hotel.  How  delightful  it 
is  there  !  How  I  wish  it  were  my  lot  to  live 
from  year  to  year  in  such  a  hotel — as  women  do 
there ;  with  nothing  to  do  from  morning  till* 
night  but  dress  themselves  and  look  nice." 

Oh,  miserable  plaint,  born  of  tyrant  pots  and 
kettles,  how  sad  a  lot  it  would  be  for  the  utterer, 
could  her  prayer  be  answered  ! 


IO4          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

Let  us  spend  the  day  with  one  of  these 
women,  as  her  friends  and  acquaintances  often 
do.  Arriving  soon  after  her  late  breakfast  we 
shall  probably  find  her  small  room  looking  very 
attractive.  It  is  well  furnished  ;  true,  its  pro- 
portions are  contracted.  It  is  up  many  stairs, 
but  there  is  generally  an  elevator  in  which  to 
mount.  There  are  no  books  here,  of  course  ; 
there  is  no  room  for  them  anywhere — not  in  the 
chamber  itself,  nor  possibly  in  the  heads  of  its 
occupants.  The  bed  is  trimly  made,  but  pass- 
ing near  it  you  observe  that  its  odor  is  not 
freshly  sweet ;  clean  linen  is  not  lavishly  be- 
stowed on  permanent  boarders,  and  to  have  this 
room — her  only  one  for  sleeping  and  reception 
purposes — made  tidy  at  an  early  hour,  the  bed 
must  be  made  before  the  vapors  of  last  night's 
occupancy  can  escape. 

You  wonder  where  this  woman  with  her  many 
elaborate  changes  of  dress  can  bestow  all  her  be- 
longings. There  are  trunks  about,  to  be  sure, 
but  it  seems  inconceivable  that  any  permanent 
person  should  submit  to  that  wretched  fate  of 
travellers,  "  living  in  trunks;"  should  daily  per- 
form those  most  irksome  jobs,  packing  and  un- 
packing. But  you  see  that  her  trunks  are  full 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          105 

to  the  brim,  and  to  show  you  some  new  finery 
she  will  go  down  on  her  knees  and  unpack  and 
repack  a  chest  as  big  as  a  boarding-house  re- 
frigerator. She  has  a  wardrobe  too,  and  by 
that  I  mean  the  article  of  furniture  so  called. 
See,  the  doqr  swings  open ;  how  crammed  it  is 
with  hats,  caps,  coats,  skirts,  boots,  shoes,  slip- 
pers and  dirty  linen  !  What  a  nightmare  such  a 
*  place  must  be  !  Of  course  it  is  impossible  to 
keep  it  in  order.  It  is  the  catchall  for  every- 
thing. The  roorn  is  so  very  small  ;  and  at  any 
sacrifice  it  must  be  kept  ostensibly  in  order. 

Now  glance  at  the  lady  occupant  of  this 
room.  Her  toilet  is  elaborate.  Her  husband 
has  been  gone  to  business  these  two  hours. 
She  did  not  breakfast  with  him.  She  never 
could  have  got  herself  up  in  proper  style  for  the 
;  breakfast-table  soon  enough  for  him.  So,  long 
after  he  has  gone,  she  has  stuck  her  last  hairpin, 
given  her  nose  its  last  dab  of  powder,  thrown 
one  of  those  detestable  suggestions  of  concealed 
untidiness,  a  "  breakfast  shawl,"  over  her 
shoulders,  and  lounged  in  to  a  late  breakfast. 

A  number  of  unappetizing  and  unhealthful 
little  dishes  are  placed  before  her,  and  she  takes 
a  forkful  out  of  one,  a  spoonful  out  of  another, 


io6          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

munches  a  pickle,  holding  it  between  her  fin- 
gers, disposes  of  a  plateful  of  hot,  heavy  cakes 
running  over  with  cloying  "syrup,"  drinks  two 
cups  of  strong  tea  or  coffee  during  the  meal, 
and  a  large  glassful  of  icy  cold  water  after  it, 
and  then  strolls  with  a  pace  like  a  snail  out  of 
the  dining-room.  She  may  have  the  "  Morning 
Trough  "  in  her  hands,  and  glances  idly  at  its 
closely  printed  columns  ;  but  she  is  really  in- 
terested in  nothing  on  earth  except  clothes,  so  ] 
the  paper — superficial  and  vulgar  as  it  is — has 
little  attraction  for  her. 

She  is  charmed  to  find  you  in  her  room  ;  of 
all  her  pleasures,  one  of  the  most  delightful  is 
"  talking."  But  thjs  word  has  a  limited  mean- 
ing with  her;  it  signifies  chattering  scandal,  or 
discussing  the  exact  width  of  a  flounceTor  the 
shade  of  an  opera-singer's  last  new  toilet.  It 
means  pulling  down  the  reputation  of  her  dearest 
friend,  or  carping  about  her  husband's  faults, 
or  regretting  that  she  hasn't  money  enough  to 
buy_more  clothes,  or  glorifying  the  appearance 
of  some  garmSTer  or  quack  doctor  who  is  stop- 
ping in_  the  house. 

You  try  to  bring  up  some  better  topic  of 
conversation  :  you  speak  of  the  last  new  book, 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          107 

the  last  new  picture,  a  bright,  strong,  helpful  \ 
sermon   you  have   recently  heard,   now   to  be    • 
bought  in  printed  form  ;  but  she  knows  nothing    ) 
of  these  things,  and  you   see  plainly   that  she 
does  not  want  to  know.  ^ 

Finding  her  at  the  end  of  her  resources,  you  [ 
leave  her.  Absolute _jwaif  on  the  ocean  of  life, 
useless  chip  floating  hither  and  yon,  what  would 
it  matter  to  the  world  at  large  if  this  minute  she 
should  sink  out  of  sight  to  rise  no  more  ?  Her 
husband  would  miss  her,  you  say ;  we  shall 
come  to  that  presently. 

As  it  is  she  finds  the  hour  high  noon  ;  the 
reproachful  sun  once  more  at  his  zenith,  showing 
her  a  morning  absolutely  wasted.  But  that  is 
nothing  new  to  her.  It  is  the  story  of  every 
day.  And,  what  is  worse,  the  afternoon  is  to 
be  more  profitless,  if  possible,  than  the  morning. 
Another  hour  before  the  looking-glass  sees  her 
ready  for  the  promenade.  Now  it  is  lunch- 
time  ;  but  she  has  no  appetite.  She  has  just 
breakfasted.  She  saunters  out.  Her  gait  is 
slow  ;  she  stops  every  ten  steps  to  gaze  into 
some  shop  window  and  long  for  its  contents. 
By  and  by  she  reaches  a  New  York  museum, 
and  here  she  may  enter  free  of  charge. 


io8           Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

A  museum  of  statuary,  painting,  historical 
relics  ?  Oh,  no.  One  of  those  large  dry-goods 
stores  which  have  no  parallel  in  the  world  ;  and 
which  tell  a  truthful  story  to  the  thinking  mind 
— a  bitter  story  of  the(Nothing  to  Do  but  look 
after  Something  to  Wear  Vf  American  women. 
Even  London — "not  a  city,  but  a  nation" — 
shows  no  such  Dress  Palaces.  And  Paris 
"  magasins  "  are  but  small  in  comparison. 

With  a  tide  of  other  women  she  sweeps  in 
through  the  plate-glass  doors,  and  becomes  the 
Torture  you  have  read  about,  who  bids  tired 
clerks  drag  down  and  open  to  her  view  hun- 
dreds of  yards  of  silk,  dozens  of  shawls,  scores 
of  boxes  of  hosiery,  piles  upon  piles  of  under- 
clothing ;  and  leaves  this  counter  to  fly  to 
another,  only  to  quit  them  all  by  and  by  and 
repeat  the  performance  at  another  shop,  coming 
away  from  all  without  having  purchased  any- 
thing anywhere. 

And  her  reason  for  not  purchasing  is  a  pretty 
good  one.  She  has  no  money.  Open  her 
pocket-book,  and  ten  to  one,  you'll  find  barely 
a  'bus  fare  in  it.  She  has  never  known  what  it 
was  to  make  or  to  own  one  single  dollar.  Every 
penny  she  has  had  in  all  the  years  of  her  life 


Get   Thee  beliind  Me,  Satan  !          109 

has  been  given  her  as  you  would  give  a  penny 
to  a  child.  Her  husband  pays  her  board — or 
runs  in  debt  for  it ;  he  feeds  and  lodges  her — 
and  when  she  wants  a  new  dress  she  goes  against 
her  listless  nature  so  far  perhaps  as  to  sit  on  his 
knee  and  twine  her  fingers  in  his  hair,  and  kiss 
him,  and  tell  him  of  some  lovely  goods  they 
have  at  Stewart's.  If  this  is  ineffectual,  she 
tries  crying  and  whining,  pouting  and  sulking, 
and  one  or  the  other  of  these  plans  generally 
carries  the  day.  In  this  noble  manner  she 
obtains  her  clothing ;  and  when  she  has  obtained 
it  let  her  not  fail  to  give  thanks  and  praise,  as  if 
it  were  an  act  of  the  grandest  generosity  on  the 
part  of  her  "lord  and  master" — fitting  title  to 
express  the  position  of  such  a  husband  as  this. 

And  when  she  has  got  her  dress  and  put  it 
on,  who  is  to  admire  it?  Not  her  husband,  for 
he  is  away  all  day,  and  generally  goes  out  in  the 
evenings  to  play  billiards,  or  see  his  business 
acquaintances  in  the  rotundo  of  the  hotel.  She 
airs  it  before  the  women,  and  perhaps  carries  off 
some  petty  triumph  there  ;  but  this  does  not 
entirely  satisfy  her,  and  she  looks  about  for  other 
admirers.  She  need  not  look  in  vain.  All  men 
are  not  busy ;  that  is,  during  her  waking  hours. 


iio          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan! 

Considering  that  he  is  a  gambler  (but  that  is 
not  considered,  for  it  is  not  known),  and  is  up 

f~~~ 

all  night,  Captain  Frothingale  looks  remarkably 
well  during  the  hours  he  paces  Broadway,  and 
stares   at  pretty  women  by  the   score.       How 
does  it  tiappen  that  this  married  woman  is  so, 
intimate  with  this  dubious-looking  man  ?     She 
/  does  not  bow  to  him  when  her  husband  is  with 
y  her.       Perhaps    to    avoid    answering   this   very 
question  :   How  did  she  make  his  acquaintance? 
Who   knows  ?     I   confess   I   don't — I   can   only 
make  a  guess  in  the  matter.      Perhaps  by  her 
."answering    "just  for  fun:>  his  matrimonial  ad- 
/    vertisement,  also  inserted  "  for  fun  "  in  a  news- 
paper ;  perhaps  by  his  treading  on  her  toes  in 
a  'bus  or  street  car. 

"Treading  on  her  toes!"  That  is  a  funny 
way  to  scrape  up  an  acquaintance  ! 

Granted.  But  it  was  the  way  a  man  em- 
ployed with  sister  Rebecca  when  she  lived  in 
Brooklyn.  That  was  before  we  kept  house, 
but  all  boarded  around  wretchedly  separate. 
By  some  strange  coincidence,  sister  Rebecca 
would  very  often  find  herself  next  to  this  man 
in  the  Fulton  Ferry  and  Fifth  Avenue  stage 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  .'          1 1 1 

downward  bound  ;  let  her  sit  where  she  might, 
before  the  journey  was  ended  he  would  con- 
trive such  changes  as  brought  him  next  her. 
Then  he  would  tread  on  her  toes.  Well,  put 
this  down  as  possibly  an  accident.  On  the 
ferry-boat,  there  he  was.  She  hurried  to  an 
obscure  corner;  he  followed  her  and  trod  on 
her  toes.  In  the  Brooklyn  cars  he  was  there, 
and  his  accomplished  purpose  was  to  tread  on 
her  toes. 

Now,  Rebecca  is  not  a  silly,  coquettish  girl ; 
she  is  a  noble  woman,  dressed  in  widow's  garb, 
modest  and  uncityfied.  But,  really,  when  a 
man  keeps  up  a  two  weeks'  course  of  toe-tread- 
ing the  most  unsuspicious  woman  will  begin 
to  notice  it.  She  might  indeed  say,  "Well,  in 
the  'bus  it  was  an  accident ;  on  the  boat  it  was 
a  curious  coincidence ;  but  the  car  turns  the 
scale,  and  proves  to  her  that  it  was  an  inten- 
tional plan — he  meant  to  tread  on  those  toes, 
and  he  intended  her  to  notice  it.  Even  if  for 
one  or  two  or  three  times  she  remained  in 
doubt,  a  daily  toe-treading  will  obtrude  itself 
on  the  most  prosaic  imagination.  And  how 
did  Rebecca  put  a  stop  to  this  underhand 
means  of  expressing  admiration,  this  under- 


112  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan! 

foot  method  of  saying  "  I  wish  to  know  you,' 
this  toe-pressure,  which  was  an  insult,  an   in- 
dignity ?     By  remonstrance? — by  appeal? — by 
virtuous    outburst    of  indignant    womanly    lan- 
guage ?      Not  at  all.      By  merely  paying  him 
off -in  his  own  coin.      By  simply  returning  toe 
for  toe.     An  eye  for  an  eye,  a  tooth  for  a  tooth, 
and  a  toe  for  a  toe.      The  first  time  he  came 
near   her  after   her    resolution   was    taken,  she 
gathered  up  all  the  strength  in  her  body,  and 
concentrating  it  in  one  foot  she  trod  on  his  toes 
till  he  howled.      It  was  an  unsuspected  advan- 
tage that  he  had  corns.      He  never  trod  again. 
r     I  think  it  was  the  wisest  thing  she  could  have 
1  done  to  express  her  contempt  and  disapproba- 
tion.     It  not  only  rebuked  him,  but  it  was  so 
<   grotesque  a  revenge  that  it  completely  destroyed 
the  puerile  effort  at  sentiment  he  was  making. 
And  to  think  of  prim,  shy  Rebecca   doing  it ! 
I  Verily  a  good  woman  is  eg^ual  to  any  emergency 
'  — even  the  unexpected  one  of  having  to  toe  the 
^mark  in  this  manner. 

By  some  such  means  has  the  acquaintance 
between-  Captain  Frothingale  and  the  married 
woman  I  was  speaking  of  been  -made  ;  or  they 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          113 

may  have  been  introduced  by  some  irresponsible 
person. 

I  do  not  exaggerate  when  I  say  that  a  full 
half  of  the  women  who  ase  lodged  in  harem- 
like  hotels,  with  nothing  to  dojrom  day  to  day, 
week  to  week,  month  to  month,  but  dress  and 
lookjDretty,  are  carrying  on  a  more  or  less  guilty 
flirtation  with  some  such  person  as  Captain 
Frothingale. 

It  is  not  in  France  alone  that  married  women 
have  lovers  !  The  acquaintanceship  may  end 
with  nothing  more  harmful  (though  this  is  bad 
enough)  than  a  few  love-notes  and  some  lavish 
gifts  of  flowers  ;  or  it  may  terminate  in  blood 
and  disgrace,  or  a  bullet  in  the  seducer's  brain, 
a  lasting  stigma  on  the  woman's  fame,  a  trial  for 
murder,  and  a  verdict  of  justifiable  homicide  for 
the  husband. 

But  has  this  woman  no  children,  you  ask — no 
baby  to  occupy  her  time  and  attention  ? 

Baby !  Great  Heavens,  you  silly  creature,  , 
what  are  you  talking  about  ?  What  does  she 
want  with  a  babyj  What  will  she  do  with  it  ? 
—how  support  it  ?  It  is  as  much  as  they  can 
do  to  meet  their  expenses  now.  Her  husband's 
weekly  earnings  (their  only  income,  for  the  wife 


114          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan! 

earns  nothing)  are  barely  sufficient  to  pay  their 
weekly  board,  lodging  and  laundry  bills.  Every 
dress,  every  hat,  every  pair  of  boots  or  shoes, 
is  an  emergency  to  be  met  by  desperate  effort, 
as  emergencies  are.  How  can  they  contem- 
plate the  expense  of  a  nurse  and  baby  ?  Oh, 
no,  it  is  not  to  be  thougnt  of! 

Besides  she  don't  care  for  babies — in^fact, 
'  hates  children.  A  baby  would  spoil  her  figure 
first,  and  make  her  look  motherly  afterwards. 
So  the  ungodly  slaughter  of  an  innocent  takes 
pjace.  Hush — sh  !  These  are  bold  words — 
bad  words  !  Are  they  as  bold  andjjadas  the 
eed  ? 

And,  observe,  the  harm  these  women  do — 
not  by  this  one  act,  but  by  the  general  tenor  of 
their  lives — is  not  to  themselves  alone,  but  to 
the  sex.  Men  see  these  women — they  are 
prominently  in  the  eye  of  men — they  live  in  the 
panorama  of  the  streets  much  more  conspicuous- 
ly than  the  few  women  whom  busmess  occupa- 
tion callsthere — and  men  forrnjrom  them  their 
estimate 'of  womankind  in  general.  E)oTng  this, 
it  is  easy  to  Imagine  how  low  that  estimate  is. 


. 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          115 


XI. 

ONE  of  my  favorite  illustrations  of  the 
Boeotian  stupidity  of  some  women — but  this 
requires  facial  illustration  to  make  it  entirely 
successful — is  an  observation  of  the  lives  of  cer- 
tain wives  of  New  York  Legislators  at  Albany. 

Every  year  the  experience  repeats  itself. 
Those  legislators'  wives  (each  with  a  big  cluster 
diamond  ring  on  her  forefinger)  dress  them- 
selves in  the  morning  in  vulgar,  rattling  silks 
and  point-lace  collars,  and  after  each  meal  they 
go  and  sit  in  the  parlor  of  the  Rataplan  House. 
Whether  they  have  been  guilty  of  that  un- 
pardonable vulgarity,  getting  up  from  the  table 
with  their  mouths  full,  or  whether  they  have 
cribbed  a  few  rasins  or  figs  or  apples  is*to  me 
unknown,  but  certain  it  is  that  they  are  always 
chewing.  And  as  they  sit  at  the  windows  with 
dull,  expressionless  eyes,  motionless  figures  arid 
lips  that  for  hours  never  open  (for  they  never 
speak,  even  to  each  other),  the  resemblance  to  a 
cow  chewing  its  cud  becomes  so  strong  that  an 
active,  energetic  woman  feels  like  rushing  up 
and  shaking  them,  just  to  see  if  they  will  moo. 


n6          Get  Thee  behind  Me,  Satan! 

Or  a  mixed  Tennyson  flies  to  her  brain,  and  she 
longs  to  scream  out : 

Legislator's  wife,  who  are  not  Vere  de  Vere, 

If  Time  be  heavy  on  your  hands, 
Are  there  no  beggars  at  your  gate, 
•  Nor  any  poor  about  your  lands  ? 

(Go,  teach  the  orphan  boy  to  read, 
Go  teach  the  orphan  girl  to  sew, 
Pray  Heaven  for  a  human  heart,  and 

don't  sit  there  any  longer  gazing  into  that 
apothecary's  shop  opposite,  when  you  have 
already  counted  a  hundred  times  over  every 
bottle  of  Derry  Pavis's  Hair  Killer,  and  Hum- 
bug's Fluid  Extract  of  Blue  Jew. 

The  arrival  of  the  legislating  husbands  creates 
a  diversion.  It  has  been  said  that  you  may 
legislate  till  the  cows  come  home.  \  These  have 

I  legislated  till  they  came  home  to  the  cows. 
'   It  i^  such  women    as   these   who   point   the 
moral  and  adorn  the  tale  of  those  talkers  and 

/writers  who  inveigh  against  the  helplessness  of 
wives,  the  mill-stone-around-the-neck  character 
of  women  in  general.  Yet  the  very  men  who 
make  these  observations  would  be  the  first  to 

\  frown  down  any  efforts  at  self-support  in  their 

•'  own  sisters  or  mothers  ;  even  in  the  women 
they  really  purpose  marrying. 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan!          117 

One  of  the  best-hearted  men  I  know  has  for 
his  excellent  wife  a  lady  who  was  before  her 
marriage  a  saleswoman  in  a  store.  Now  you 
cannot  think  how  it  annoys  that  otherwise  sensi- 
ble man  to  have  his  wife  refer  to  'that  period  of 
her  life  ;  he  beg£  her  in  semi-humorous,  semi- 
pathetic  tones  to  "  Sink  the  shop  ;  "  but  she 
will  not.  She  says  the  shop  kept  her  from 
sinking  once  ;  it  may  be  her  life-preserver  again, 
and  that  of  her  children. 

Nor  does  her  husband  see  the  least  connec- 
tion between  her  shop-life  and  her  wife-life. 
Yet  there  is  one  ;  yes,  and  a  close  one.  The 
very  qualities  which  made  her  a  desirable  sales- 
woman, and  which  she  developed  by  years  of 
trade-life,  are  now  brought  in  play  in  her  hus- 
band's home,  and  conduce  to  his  comfort.  It 
is  the  punctuality  which  was  imperative  at  the 
store,  which  makes  her  husband's  breakfast  daily 
ready  at  the  minute  ;  it  is  the  acquired  habit  of 
standing  long  on  the  feet  (sometimes  carried  to 
a  cruel  and  unnecessary  extent  in  stores)  that 
enables  her  to  keep  about  when  other  women 
would  be  on  their  backs.  It  may  be  in  part  a 
natural  gift  (but  if  so  it  has  been  improved  by 
her  necessary  computations  at  the  store)  which 


Il8  Get   Thee  behind  Me,   Satan! 

enables  her  to  add  figures  with  surprising  rapid- 
ity and  exactness,  and  thus  save  many  a  penny 
from  cheating  or  mistaken  hucksters  in  the 
market-place.  Her  trained  memory,  too,  makes 
/  her  her  husband's  date-book.  "  Nellie,  when  did 
such  and  such  a  thing  happen  ?"  And  so  exact 
and  reliable  is  she  that  if  she  forgets  once,  he, 
who  forgets  always,  is  disappointed  and  aston-y 
ished. 

In  painful  contrast  to  the  idle  women  who  sit 
chewing  their  cuds  in  Albany,  or  gallivanting  in 
Broadway,  or  living  in  the  Harem  hotels  in 
New  York,  are  the  thousands  of  poverty- 
stricken  women  who  are  stitching  their  lives 
away  in  making  clothing  at  health-ruining  prices 
for  merchants  who  sell  them  to  the  first-men- 
tioned class  at  purse-ruining  prices.  The  sor- 
rows of  these  girls,  the  swindles  put  upon  them, 
the  death  in  life  they  endure,  have  been  so  ter- 
rible, so  palpable,  so  sinful  that  something  like 
an  organized  and  systematic  effort  has  been 
made  to  protect  them  from  the  devouring 
wolves  who  employ  them. 

And  yet,  at  what  cross-purposes  do  we  not 
work?  If  you  ask  me  What  is  one  of  the  most 
difficult  things  to  do  I  know,  I  will  truthfully 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan!          119 

answer,  To  obtain  the  services  of  a  sewing-girl 
in  New  York  city.  I  stand  ready  at  the  pre- 
sent moment  to  pay  a  neat  and  dexterous  semp- 
stress two  dollars  and  a  half  a  day  and  provide 
her  board  also,  to  make  up  my  summer  cloth- 
ing ;  and  for  the  life  of  me  I  cannot  find  her.  I 
am  obliged  to  wait  for  a  girl  who  is  engaged 
three  deep. 

I  confess  there  is  something  here  I  cannot 
understand. 

(Yes  sir — I  have  read  your  explanation ;  your 
extremely  logical,  very  reasonable,  altogether 
heartless  explanation — and  I  don't  understand 
it  any  better  than  I  did  before,  thank  you  !) 

This  is  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  sewing  is  the 
favorite  trade  for  women,  the  one  in  which 
more  girls  are  employed  than  any  other  known  : 
it  would  be  difficult  to  say  why,  except  that  it  is 
a  career  for  women  approved  by  men — perhaps 
because,  being  so  laborious,  they  are  not  fond 

of  it  for  themselves.      Be  sure  if  it  offered  much 

i 

they  would  have  a  finger — ten  of  them — in  it. 
When  men  undertake  to  sell  bustles  and  hoop- 
skirts,  corsets  and  under-linen  to  ladies  (as  they 
do),  holding  up  the  articles  for  inspection, 
spreading  them  about  and  expatiating  on  the 


I2O          Get   TJice  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

excellence  of  the  cut,  it  is  not  from  delicacy,  I 
fancy,  that  they  refrain  from  the  mere  stitching 
of  these  articles.  They  do  not  covet  the  needle, 
and  they  are  right.  It  is  the  last  thing  I  would 
turn  to  ;  first,  because  it  is  so  laborious  ;  sec- 
ond, because  it  is  so  ill-paid.  If  it  should  so 
happen  that  I  were  to  lose  to-morrow  that  which 
I  have  earned  and  saved,  if  people  were  sud- 
denly to  stop  coming  to  my  lectures,  and  pub- 
lishers were  to  decline  to  purchase  my  MSS.  ; 
in  short,  if  every  resource  which  I  have  hereto- 
fore employed  in  earning  my  livelihood  were  to 
be  shut  off  from  me,  be  sure  I  should  not  go 
hire  a  miserable  garret  somewhere  and  try  to 
get  some  sewing  to  do  ;  no,  verily  ;  I  should 
put  myself  at  my  comeliest,  wear  my  cheeriest 
smile,  and  stepping  from  one  house  to  another 
I  should  inquire  in  my  choicest  vernacular  If 
they  wanted  a  Girl.  Does  any  one  want  a  Girl 
here  ?  I  inquire.  Go  to !  The  question  is 
superfluous.  They  want  nothing  else  but  girls. 
"Girls  !  "  to  the  Right  of  us,  "  Girls  !  "  to  the 
Left  of  us  is  cannoned  and  thundered.  Cooks, 
housemaids,  chamber-girls,  child's  nurses  !  Hey, 
ye  hundreds  of  superfluous  teachers,  ye  thou- 
sands of  ill-paid,  under-fed  sempstresses,  fly  to 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          121 

the  shelter  of  warm  homes — nice  kitchens  in 
which  you  shall  be  queen — tidy  bedrooms 
where  you  may  lie  snugly  and  have  an  extra 
blanket  for  the  asking — well-kept  nurseries 
with  pleasant  companionship  of  the  children 
you  tend — these  are  all  awaiting  those  who 
seek  them.  Not  a  lady  of  your  acquaintance  in 
city  or  country  but  has  her  story  to  tell  about 
the  difficulty  of  getting  good  servants. 

I  grant  you  there  shall  be  difficulties  in  your 
way.  I  have  already  indicated  some  of  them. 
But  when  and  O  where,  sister  woman,  do  you 
expect  to  find  a  way  that  shall  be  without  diffi- 
culties ?  I  testify  that  there  is  no  such  road  in 
any  direction  that  /  have  traveled. 

The  only  smooth  path  in  this  world  is  the 
path  downward  ! 

But  tHenTif  y°u  find  it  an  easy  thing  to  drop  \ 
down  from    a  housetop  to  the  ground  below, 
you  are  likely  to  find  that  the  conclusion  of  your 
flight  will  be  harder  work  than  any  climbing 
you  ever  did  in  your  life. 

Smooth   is   the   road   to   ruin,    but   the   end  ', 

•^,  L        ; 

thereofi?  rough. 


122  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 


XII. 

MR.  TROTMAN  sat  on  our  parlor  sofa,  and  I 
sat  on  the  queer  little  cane-bottomed  chair  that 
Husband  bought  in  one  of  the  Rhine  towns — 
Coblentz,  I  think.  I  sat  there  in  front  of  him, 
trying  to  be  polite  to  my  guest,  but  with  my 
blood  tingling  to  hear  such  pernicious  doctrines 
preached  in  such  a  lovely  place  as  our  parlor 
was  that  morning. 

The  sun  was  shining  in  at  the  front  windows, 
making  every  faded  bit  of  red  reps  glow  like 
woven  rubies ;  the  canary  was  singing  such 
trilling  matins  as  must  have  reached  to  heaven  ; 
the  flowers  were  growing  as  if  for  a  race  with 
each  other  to  see  which  could  get  ahead  in 
magnificence,  and  win  the  most  admiring  ex- 
clamations— the  most  soulful  "Oh's  !  "  every 
morning  from  the  household  ;  the  muslin  cur- 
tains were  as  fresh  and  as  prettily  done  up  as  a 
lace  handkerchief  just  from  the  hands  of  a 
French  clear-starcher  ;  Algie  sat  at  the  piano, 
picking  out  a  tinkling  Sunday-school  air  in  a 
subdued  key  with  his  short  fore-finger,  but  at- 
tending to  Mr.  Trotman,  I  suspected,  with  both 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan!          123 

his  little  ears  wide  open  ;  and  through  it  all, 
through  the  canary's  song  and  the  noise  in  the 
street,  through  the  creaking  that  the  little  Rhine 
chair  will  make  when  you  fidget  in  it,  through 
the  rustle  of  sister  Rebecca's  form  as  she 
moved  among  the  flowers  with  her  watering- 
pot,  through  the  tinkling  of  Algie's  hymn,  Mr. 
Trotman's  unpleasant  droning  voice  sounded 
self-complacently,  as  he  urged  the  doctrines 
of  the  "  liberal  "  school  which  he  had  recently 
joined. 

Oh,  the  sunniness  of  that  blissful  morning  ! 
The  atmosphere  was  full  of  it ;  the  flowers  were 
drinking  it  ;  the  goldfish  splashed  in  his  globe, 
and  borrowed  some  of  it  for  his  coat.  Mr. 
Trotman  was  in  the  only  shadowy  corner  of 
the  room  ;  the  sunshine  did  not  reach  him  ;  and 
from  out  the  darkness  where  he  sat  issued  the 
words  which  jarred  upon  me  with  hideous  dis- 
cord, violating  the  sweet  domesticity  of  the 
hour  and  the  scene. 

I  glanced  at  Rebecca.  Her  tall  slim  figure 
was  draped  in  her  slightly-modified  widow's 
weeds,  and  her  wedding-ring  and  a  mourning 
ring  with  her  dead  Dick's  hair,  glinted  in  the 
sunlight  on  the  third  finger  of  her  left  hand. 


1 24  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

Still  she  moved  about,  voiceless,  tilting  her 
watering-pot  over  the  flowers,  and  sometimes 
stooping  to  examine  a  leaf  with  her  careful, 
intelligent  eyes. 

Sister  Rebecca  is  the  secret  of  our  flowers. 
She  knows  them  as  the  scholar  his  book,  the 
mother  her  baby.  Other  people  buy  gorgeous 
hot-house  plants  all  in  bloom,  and  pay  great 
prices  for  them  ;  Rebecca  is  given  an  inch  or 
two  of  cuttings  here  and  there,  and  when  every- 
body else's  flowers  are  dead,  behold  hers, 
flourishing  as  luxuriantly  as  cacti  in  a  Louisiana 
wild  ! 

Such  imperturbability — even  from  her — sur- 
prised me  a  little.  I  said  to  myself,  "  Why  is  it 
that  I  cannot  be  as  cool  as  our  Rebecca  is  ? 
Here  am  I  just  fairly  fretting  myself  into  a  bad 
temper,  my  blood  actually  engaged  in  boiling, 
my  teeth  in  biting  my  lips  angrily  ;  and  that 
cool,  unexcitable,  and  altogether  admirable 
Rebecca  is  unmoved  as  a  statue,  as  unfretted 
as  Father  Time." 

Politeness    is   second    nature   to    me.      It   is 

I  always  easier  for  me  to  say  an  agreeable  thing 

,  than  a  disagreeable   one.     But  for  once   I   was 

tried   severely,  in   my   efforts  to  politely  parry 


Get  Thee  behind  Me,  Sal  an  !          125 

Mr.  Trotman's  vile  blows  at  everything  I  love 
best.  The  longer  he  talked,  the  more  the 
difficulty  grew,  as,  waxing  warm  in  his  argu- 
ment, he  waxed  bold  to  the  verge  of  indecency. 
At  last  I  said, 

"  Mr.  Trotman,  you  surely  do  not  mean  to 
say  that  when  Mrs.  Freelove  claims  the  right  to 
change  her  husband  every  day,  and  that  the 
only  restraint  on  her  license  should  be  the/ 
limit  of  her  desires,  you  approve  her  utter- 
ance ?" 

"Why  not?"  said  he  boldly,  and  with  a 
sudden  accession  of  heat.  "  I  approve  every- 
thing Mrs.  Freelove  says,"  and  his  eyes  flashed. 
"  She  believes  that  marriage  trammels  the  soul 
of  man,  and  so  do  I.  She  believes  marriage  to 
be  the  mother  of  abominations,  and  so  do  I. 
Abolish  marriage  and  you  abolish  the  social  / 
evil.  If  there  were  no  married  men,  there 
would  be  no  fallen  women  !" 

And  here  occurred  that  scene  which  has 
made  so  much  talk  in  our  circle  of  acquaint- 
ance, and  of  which  such  exaggerated  accounts 
have  got  abroad.  Rebecca  turned  suddenly 
upon  Mr.  Trotman,  raised  her  watering-pot  and 
sprinkled  him  with  a  little  shower  of  sparkling 


1 26          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  / 

drops,  saying,  as  she  did  so,  in  her  cool,  unim- 
passioned  way, 
•(    "  Get  thee  behind  me,  Satan  / 

I  thought  Mr.  Trotman  would  go  through 
the  floor. 

How  he  got  out  of  the  house,  I  scarcely 
know.  I  am  not  sure  but  he  vanished  like  a 
stage-imp  through  a  trap-door  to  an  accompani- 
ment of  blue  fire.  He  has  never  called  upcn 
us  since.  I  understand  he  is  very  bitter  in  his 
sarcastic  comments  upon  us,  in  the  choice  circle 
where  he  is  fond  of  passing  his  time. 


XIII. 

THE  truth  seldom  lies  at  the  extremes. 
/    In  the  matter  of  marriage,  the  Mormons  and 
the    Free-lovers    occupy    the    extremes — and 
which  is  the  more  abominable  it  were  hard  to  say.y/ 
,     The  Mormon  extreme  amounts  to  the  tenet "'> 
/  that  the   woman  who   does  not  marry  will  be 
\    damned.     The  Free-love  extreme  implies  thaty 
\  she  will  be  damned  if  she  does  marry. 

Here,  as  usual,  extremes  meet.     There  is  not 
so  much   difference  •  between    Mormonism  and 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan!          127 

Free-love  as  might  exist  between  a  black  cat 
and  a  gray  one. 

Mrs.  Freelove  is  not  married,  but  lives  with  a 
man  in  the  communion  of  married  life.  Mrs. 
Mormon  is  married  to  the  tenth  part  of  a  man, 
and  to  that  extent  she  has  the  advantage  in( 
decency  of  Mrs.  Freelove.  Yet,  between  the 
two  there  is  nothing  for  an  honorable  woman  to 
choose.  The  black  cat  and  the  gray  cat  differ 
only  by  a  shade. 

Neither  of  these  women  can  ever  know  the   j 
highest  bliss  this^earthly  life  can  give — the  bliss  / 
of  true  companionship  with  a  beloved. consort. 
I  pity  both  with  all  my  heart.  (From  what  pure    j 
'  delights  are  they  forever  shut  out !  \ 

To  soften  the  (as  he  calls  it)  harshness  of  my 
judgment  regarding  Mrs.  Freelove,  our  good- 
natured  but  not  very  long-headed  friend  Sample 
said  to  me  recently, 

"  Well,  now,  I  shouldn't  wonder  if  she  • 
preaches  worse  than  she  practises.  Trotman 
says  so  ;  Trotman  knows  her  intimately.  Trot- 
man says  that  one  day  he  was  walking  with  her 
all  alone  in  the  Central  Park,  and  she  said  to 
him  in  the  sweetest  voice,  '  Mr.  Trotman,  I 
appreciate  how  good  you  are  to  show  yourself 


128  Get   TJice  behind  Me,  Satan! 

in  this  public  place  with  me.  I  know  how  the 
generality  of  people  regard  me.  Still,  I  think 
they  are  too  hard — I  do  indeed.  Sit  down  on 
this  bench,  and  I  will  tell  you  something."  And 
then  they  sat  down  on  a  bench  in  a  quiet  place, 
and  she  looked  right  straight  in  his  eyes  with 
her  eyes,  and  then  she  said,  in  a  voice  that  he 
would  have  taken  his  Bible  oath  was  truthful, 
'  Mr.  Trotman,  as  true  as  I  live,  I  never' " 

Here  Mr.  Sample  suddenly  blushed  violently, 
and  stammered  out  "  'pon  my  word,  though,  I 
didn't  think  how  confounded  immodest  that  was 
in  her,  till  now  when  I've  undertaken  to  tell  the 
story  in  the  presence  of  ladies." 

Wretched  woman  !  to  be  so  lost  to  modesty 
that  she  has  no  shame  in  a  conversation  of  this 
sort,  between  herself  and  a  young  married  man, 
on  a  bench  in  a  quiet  place  in  Central  Park  ! 
It  was  a  scene  which  I  will  match  for  you  in  the 
first  French  novel  we  pick  up.  Heroines  of 
French  novels — held  up  to  the  execration  of 
virtuous  people  all  over  the  world — are  con- 
stantly indulging  in  this  sort  of  scene.  Time 
and  place  are  exactly  fitting.  The  beautiful 
park — the  seclusion  in  the  midst  of  a  crowd, 
birds  twittering  their  love-songs  overhead, 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          129 

leaves  bursting  with  warmth  and  gladness,  the  \ 
soft  winds  wooing — the  rich  equipages  passing  J 
at  a  distance,  the  voice  subdued  to  a  tone  of 
flattering  confidence — 

/  Get  thce  behind  me,  Satan  !  The  trail  of  the 
serpent  is  there  ;  we  know  its  slime  ;  you  cannot 
persuade  us  it  is  healthy  moisture — dew,  for 

v  instance,  or  vivifying  rain  from  heaven. 

And  be  sure  that  I  who  write  you  these  lines 
do  so  with  a  full  knowledge  of  how  terrible  a 
blade  is  calumny.     I   have   seen  good  women 
stabbed  to  the  heart  by  it,  thrown  over  into 
the  black  waters  of  the  river  of  Despair  by  it  ; 
I  have  seen  loving  hearts  sundered  by  it,  loyal  ) 
confidence  destroyed  by  it  ;  households  broken 
up  by  it,  the   fair  sun  in   Heaven  clouded  for 
tear-blinded    eyes   by   it.     "  Give   me  but   an  \ 
atom  of  truth  for  a  basis,"  said  a  lady  witness    1 
in  a  St.  Louis  court-room  recently,  "  and  I  will  ' 
ruin  the  character  of  any  woman  in  the  world." 
It  is  the  entirely  thoughtless,  or  the  entirely 
vicious    only,  who    really  make    a  business    of 
calumniating.      I    am    as    afraid    of    injuring    a  A 
woman's  character  by  injudicious  comment  as  I    / 

;  am  of  handling  a  kerosene  lamp  or  a  bottle  of 
oxalic  acid.  I  am  afraid  of  hurting  myself  as 


130          Get  Thee  behind  Me,  Satan! 

well   as   the  other  person.     You   cannot  keep 

clean  hands  when  you  dabble  in  the  mud.     I 

like    my    hands    to    be    clean.      But    you    will 

remember  that  it  was  neither  you  nor  I,  reader, 

who  went  after  Mrs.   Freelove,   looked  in  her 

/  house    and    found    two    husbands    there.      She 

I  herself  came  forth,  introduced   her   husbands, 

held  up  for  imitation  a  plurality  of  husbands, 

urged  young  girls  to  take  any  number  of  hus- 

"  bands,  called  upon  the  law  to  sanction  any  mad 

,  animalism   any   sensualist's  brain  could  devise. 

It  is  not  what  others  have  said  of  her,  but  what 

she  has  said  of  herself,  that  excites  the   disgust 

and   reprobation  of  every  Christian  man    and 

woman  in  this  and  other  lands.     What_she^has 

,  done,  is  between  her  and  God  ;   He  shall  judge 

herTofthat ;  but  what  she  has  said  might  _ger- 

vert  the  morals  of  our  little   Algie,    and    God 

allows  me  to  judge  her  for  that ;  and  if  this  book 

proved  but  a  shield  for  that  one — or  any  other 

one — young  heart,  it  were  worth  the  writing. 

Before  I  saw  Mrs.  Freelove  and  her  Sister  I 
had  heard  that  they  were  women  who  had  been 
engaged  in  telling  fortunes  to  men  in  dingy 
rooms  in  Western  towns,  and  the  general  jm- 
pression  was  that  their  own  fortunes  were  as 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          13] 

dubious  as  those  they  "  told  " — their  characters 
as  dingy_as  their  rooms.  Knowing  how  cheap 
is  this  sort  of  condemnation  of  women  who  feel 
that  the  washtub  and  the  sewing-machine  are 
not  their  vocation,  and  that  these  are  already 
overcrowded  with  votaries,  I  paid  no  more  heed 
to  these  warnings  than  if  they  had  not  been 
uttered. 

"  It  seems  too  bad  folks  will  be.  so  hateful," 
said  a  sweet  girl  of  nineteen  to  me  the  other 
day  in  New  Orleans  ;  "Amanda  L.  went  and 
got  a  place  in  the  Dollar  Store — the  only  store 
she  could  get  in,  as  they  don't  have  girl  clerks 
in  stores  here  in  New  Orleans,  except  in  the 
French  quarter.  She  gets  seven  dollars  a  week, 
and  since  she's  been  there  everybody  has  cut 
her — they  say  it's  not  respectable  to  stand  in  a 
Dollar  Store,  and  that  she's  lost  her  reputation. 
Even  the  other  Sunday-school  teachers  are  cool 
to  her.  She  says,  All  right;  she  won't  go  to 
church  and  Sunday-school  any  more.  Church 
and  Sunday-school  won't  feed  her,  and  seven 
dollars  a  week  will." 

It  would  be  interesting  to  learn  whether  a  , 
lovely  young  girl  who  had  really  lost  her  repu- 
tation could  not  make  more  than  seven  dollars 


132  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan! 

a  week  out  of  what  remained  to  her  as  that  lost 
reputation's  equivalent,  and  not  be  obliged  to 
stand  on  her  feet  from  eight  o'clock  in  the 
morning  till  ten  at  night  in  a  Dollar  Store. 
f  If  a  woman  tells  me  she  is  chaste  I  will  be- 
lieve her.  She  is  the  only  person  who  should 
know.  So  fond  are  men  of  trifling  with  the 
good  name  of  women  that  I  will  accept  no 

\  man's  testimony  as  against  her  own. 

f      But,  what  do  Ijcare_how  chaste  she__be.   if 
j^P^Jji   she  gets  up  and  preaches  the  doctrine  of  un- 

\  chastity? 

The  only  time  I  remember  hearing  my  father 
rebuke  my  mother — it  was  a  gentle  reboke, 
more  in  sorrow  than  in  anger — was  on  one  occa 
sion  when,  on  hearing  of  the  glittering  success 
of  some  wicked  person  of  their  acquaintance, 
she  made  one  of  those  remarks  which  rise  to 
the  lips  of  almost  every  one,  at  some  time  or 

,  another,  that' Vice  seemed  always  to  triumph, 

(  and  Virtue  was  often  a  discouraging  business. 
He  told  her  that  he  knew  well  enough  she  did 
not  mean  what  she  said,  and  that  she  would  be 
the  last  person  to  gain  fortune  or  position  at 
sacrifice  of  the  very  smallest  of  those  beautiful 
qualities  which  made  her  so  precious  to  us  all — 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan!          133 

there  were  young  children  about,  who  would 
remember  what  she  said.  And  to  show  that  he 
was  right,  here  am  I  remembering  it,  though  I 
am  sure  I  was  not  more  than  ten  years  old  when 
the  circumstance  happened,  and  no  one  has 
ever  referred  to  it  since. 

And  I  remembered  the  answer,  too  !  And  I 
remember  that  mother  fully  agreed  with  its 
judgment,  and  reproached  herself  for  her 
thoughtlessness.  De^ar^Jather — long  in  youh 
grave,  where  soon  we  all  shall  lie : — dear  moth- 
er,— yet  by  God's  blessing  spared  to  us, — your 
children  love  you  and  bless  you,  and  thank  you 
for  all  your  counsels,  which  have  stood  them  in 
good  stead  in  many  a  weary  strife. 

Not  all  the  tortures  of  the  inquisition  should 
make  me  point  the  finger  of  scorn  at  any  living 
woman,  and  charge  her  with  being  unchaste,  a 
free-lover,  in  face  of  her  denial.  But  a  woman 
stands  forth  before  the  world  and  says, 

"  I  am  a  free-lover  !  I  believe  it  is  my  right 
to  change  my  husband  daily,  if  I  wish.  I  be- 
lieve that  a  woman  should  boldly  and  openly 


134          Get   Tliee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

live  as  wife  with  a  man  to  whom  she  is  not  mar- 
ried. I  live  with  two  men,  one  of  whom  is  my 
present  consort,  the  other  my  discarded  consort, 
and  I  am  not  married  to  either  of  them." 

I  think  with  regard  to  this  person  it  may  be 

said  that  Calumny's  occupation's  gone. 

/""  When  an  egg  advertises  its  own  rottenness,  in 

/  that  language  with  which  it  is  endowed,  it  is  not 

necessary  for  any  bystander  to  explain  wherein 

\it  is  rotten,  or  assay  the  quality  of  its  rottenness. 

I  do  not  go  any  further  than  Mrs.  Freelove's 
own  public  utterances  in  dealing  with  the  sub- 
ject— it  is  not  needful. 

There  are  certain  good  women  who  associate 
with  Mrs.  Freelove,  and  welcome  what  they 
deem  her  aid  to  the  woman-suffrage  cause — not 
perceiving  that  she  is  killing  it,  for  the  present 
generation  at  least.  And  because  these  good 
women  associate  with  her,  certain  lookers-on 
argue  that  Mrs.  Freelove  is  good  also — or  Mrs. 
Standfirm  would  not  tolerate  her. 

Hark  ye,  friends — have  ye  all  forgotten  Mrs. 
Standfirm's  speech  in  the  Woman's  Suffrage 
Convention  of  186 — ,  when  she  said,  defending 
George  Prancer  Brain,  these  words  ? 

"  Call  Mr.  Brain  a  lunatic  if  you  will.     He  has 


Get  Thee  behind  Me,  Satan!          135 

helped  us  nobly.      If  the  devil  himself  were  to  \lLr\\\j 
come  to  me  and  say  '  Mrs.  Standfirm,  let  me  aid 
you,'  I  would  reply,  'Thank  you    Mr.   Devil,/ 
your  aid  is  very  welcome.' ' 

If  you  remember  that,  as  I  do  (and  I  believe 
that  the  utterance  is  yet  to  be  found  in  print 
with  Mrs.  Standfirm's  name  to  it)  I  hope  you  will 
not  again  cite  Mrs.  Standfirm's  good  moral  char- 
acter (undoubted,  to  be  sure)  as  a  warrant  for 
that   of    Mrs.    Freelove.     Mrs.    Standfirm   has  \ 
given  the  promised  welcome  to  Satan,  that's  all,  / 
instead  of  bidding  him  "  Get  thee  behind  me  !  "/ 


XIV. 

THE  two  women  who  have  made  themselves 
principally  notorious  in  connection  with  free 
love,  I  met,  in  the  first  days  of  their  coming 
before  the  public.  They  were  then  merely 
women  who  had  opened  a  new  field  of  business 
operation  for  woman.  In  such  a  motion  as  that, 
every  woman  who  has  the  welfare  of  her  sex  at 
heart  supported  them.  I  did,  most  cordially. 
They  said  they  were  experts  at  financiering. 
For  myself  I  know  as  much  about  financiering 


136          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan! 

as  about  engineering,  but  if  they  had  said  they 
had  talent  for  the  latter  instead  of  the  former  I 
should  have  heartily  responded  "Amen  !     Clear 
the  track  !     God   be  with   you  !  "     They  were 
extremely  non-committal  in  regard  to  any  stand 
for  woman  more  decided  than  that  which  they 
themselves  had  at  that  time  taken  ;  were  not  so 
sure  that  the  ballot  was  desirable,  or  woman- 
suffrage  feasible.     Nothing  was  said  in  regard 
/  to  marriage,  and  I  supposed  they  were  what  they 
/  seemed ;    one   an    honest   married   woman,   the 
|    other  an  honest  unmarried  girl.      My  heart  is 
1    fond  to  weakness  of  young  girls,  and  this  one 
even  in  a  short  interview  awakened  my  interest, 
and  my  tenderness.     Daintily  tricked  in  girlish 
prettiness,  she  was  to  my  blinded  vision  pure, 
sweet,  and  lovable  ;  I  looked  in  her  eyes  and 
shook  her  hand,  and  wished  her  well.     That  she 
was  chaste   I  took  for  granted.      Can  you  not 
easily  understand  how  she  fell  from  her  pedestal 
of  purity,  rolled   in   the   mud   besmeared  with 
foulness,  when    I  discovered  that  by  her   own 
avowal  she  was  a  free  fever  ? — "  not  necessarily 
an  incontinent,"  as  one  of  her  apologists  ex- 
plained, "  but  most  decidedly  a  free  lover  !  " 
'      A  person  living  in  absolute  iniquity,  who  yet 


Get  Thee  behind  Me,  Satan!          137 

extols  virtue  and  execrates  vice,  is  less  a  blight  \ 
to  the  community  than  one  who  lives  chastely/ 
but   preaches  vice.     In  the  first  instance  it  is , 
only  his  own  soul  he  is  damning ;  in  the  second  \ 
he  is  trying  and  perhaps  succeeding  in  damning/ 
the  souls  of  other  people.     It  is  this  which  nul- 
lifies the  complaint  of  free-love  women  that  their 
private  lives,  which  are  their  private  business, 
are  judged  by  persons  who  are  no  more  moral 
than  themselves,  and  that  these  hypocritically 
denounce  them  when  they  are  themselves   no 
better.     It  is  certainly  true  that  he  who  casts  the 
first  stone  should  be  sinless ;  but  even  a  sinfulN 
person  (and  who  is  not  a  sinful  person  ?)  may  1 
rebel  ^with  an  indignation  worthy  of  an  angel  / 
against, teaching  young  souls  that  vice  is  virtue. 

A  marPhas  sinned — a  woman  has  sinned — 
but  they  know  they  have  sinned.  They  are 
perhaps  sorry  for  it.  Their  daily  effort  is  to 
subdue  the  evil  propensities  of  nature — to  go 
and  sin  no  more. 

An  argument  which  the  Mormons  consider 
especially  strong  in  support  of  their  position  is 
that  it  ill  behooves  Gentiles  to  be  horrified  at 
plurality  of  wives  while  marital  infidelity  is 
rampant  among  them,  outside  of  Utah.  It 


138  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

needs  the  fury  of  fanatics  to  make  out  such  a 
case  as  this ;  with  a  profound  appreciation  of 
the  moral  failings  of  our  men,  I  am  yet  fully 
convinced  that  this  infidelity  is  comparatively  a 
rare  sin  among  them.  Thank  God  the  great 
bulk  of  the  men  of  this  country  are  Christians 
who  know  and  believe  that  the  Seventh  Com- 
mandment was  meant  for  both  men  and 
women. 

But   even   those   who  transgress  know   well 
.enough  that  they  are  transgressing.     The  poor- 
I  rich  adventurer  whose  life  of  wild  iniquity  was 
/  finished  by  his  rival's  bullet,  knew  well  enough 
,  that  his  life  was  iniquitous.      He  knew  he  was 
sinning.     He  asked  and  obtained  the  forgive- 
ness of  the  sweet  woman  who  loved  him  and 
bore  his   name.     And  asking   her   forgiveness 
/was  but  a  roundabout  way  of  asking  for  that  of 
\God.     Perhaps   he   even    asked   that    of  God. 
Who  knows  what  may  have  been  the  remorse- 
ful  pains  which  shook  his  soul  in  moments  of 
seclusion  ? 

But  even  he — who  set  social  laws  at  defiance — 
did  not  presume  to  say  that  his  path  was  the 
right  path.  On  the  contrary,  I  remember  a 
speech  he  made  which  struck  me  so  forcibly 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          139 

that  I  am  able  at  this  remote  hour  to  give  the 
substance  of  what  he  said  as  it  lingers  in  my 
memory.  He  was  addressing  some  of  the  dis- 
contented ones  among  his  railway  employes, 
an$  he  said  in  effect : 

"  Boys,  it  may  strike  you  as  a  fine  thing  to 
wear  a  velvet   coat,  and   a  diamond  pin,  and 
lavender-colored  kids  ;    but,  believe  me,  under 
that   coat   there  may  be  a   heart   which   don't  j 
know  what  such  a  thing  as  peace  or  happiness  J 
is.     And  I  tell  you  if  such  a  man  did  not  get 
into    a   sort   of    whirlpool   which   swings    him 
around   so   he   can't   free   himself  from   it,  he 
would  gladly  be  like  one  of  you,  earning  honest 
wages  which   he  takes   home   to  a   good   wife/ 
and  loving  children  at   the  end  of  the   week, 
and  smoking  his  pipe  with  a  free  conscience  and 
in  comfort.     It  might  very  well  be  that,  instead 
of  you  envying  me,  it  would  be  more  fit  for  me 
to  envy  you.     But  a  man  gets  going  in  a  certain  \ 
way,  and  people  envy  him,  when  the  fact  is  he's 
leading  a  hell  of  a  life  !  " 

Even  this  poor  moralist — whose  practices 
were  notoriously  bad,  and  whose  teachings  of 
any  kind  were  few — -did  not  attempt  to  palliate 
his  wickedness  by  asserting  that  the  hell  of  a 


140          Get   TJice  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

life  which  he  lived,  was  a  heaven  of  a  life,  which 
humanity  at  large  would  do  well  to  emulate. 

The  worst  effect  of  the  spread  of  free-love 

/doctrines  would  be,  the  destruction  of  the  only 

mundane  world  that  is  entirely  pure,  the  only 

gold  in  which  there  is  no  dross,  the  only  diamond 

in  which  there  is  no  flaw.     I  mean  of  course 

fthat  world  of  beauty,    purity,   domestic   bliss, 

peace,    content,    everything    true    hearts    love 

best — that  central  point  around    which    circles 

the  best  that  there  is  in  our    civilization — and 

Mvhich  is  all  enwrapt  in  that  little  word,  Home. 

I  read  in  the  newspapers  that  Mrs.  Freelove 
owns  a  beautiful  house  in  a  pleasant  quarter  of 
the  city  of  New  York.  Here  is  the  thing  for 
which  the  worthiest  of  the  great  mass  of  people 
are  struggling — the  possession  of  a  home — the 
ownership  of  a  house  under  whose  blessed  and 
protecting  roof-tree  all  of  their  clan  may  gather 
—where  friends  may  come  to  visit — where  that 
angel  of  God  intrusted  with  the  lending  of 
baby  souls  to  mortals  may  enter  when  he  will — 
where  that  other  angel  of  God  intrusted  with 
the  glorious  work  of  wafting  them  back  to 
Heaven  must  enter  when  he  must.  All  this  is 


Get   TJice  behind  Me,  Satan  !          141 

hallowed.  Those  bricks,  that  mortar,  those 
plumber's  pipes,  that  carpenter-work,  are  not 
merely  bricks,  mortar,  lead  and  wood — they  are 
the  toiler's  epic  poem,  his  every-day  church,  his 
shrine  by  the  wayside.  A  tortoise  and  a  snail 
have  their  homes  ready  made  ;  you  and  the 
birds  make  yours.  And  when  you  have  made\ 
it  well,  and  keep  it  sweet  with  love,  clean  with 
noble  tending,  large  enough  for  all  good  im- 
pulses, too  small  for  free-love  and  other  kindred 
deviltries,  it  merits  whatever  of  affection  you/ 
lavish  in  or  on  it.  No  fear  of  pagan  idolatry,' 
of  mere  materiality  in  almost  worshipping  such 
a  home  as  this  ;  it  is  the  spirit  which  dwells 
there  which  you  reverence.  Paper  made  of 
rags  of  untold  filth,  ink  ill-smelling,  black  and 
vile,  yon  imp  whistling  "  Tommy  Dodd  "  as  he 
sets  each  stickful,  tell  me  the  story  of  the  Ser- 
mon on  the  Mount.  Christ  shines  up  from  that 
printed,  material  page  with  an  effulgence  that 
dazzles ;  and  His  very  spirit  clears  away  the 
grossness  which  might  linger  in  the  love  you 
bear  the  building-lot  where  stands  your  home. 

Let  us  see  how  this  thing  we  call  home  is 
esteemed  by  Mrs.  Freelove.  We  violate  no 
sanctity  of  privacy  in  crossing  this  threshold  ; 


142  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

we  have  the  testimony  of  the  newspaper  repor- 
ters who  have  called  there  for  this  part  of  the 
story. 

A  body  of  men — mostly  strangers  to  the 
women  they  are  about  to  visit — go  to  the  house 
on  Sunday  night.  They  pull  the  bell,  and  the 
door  is  opened  by  Mrs.  Freelove's  youngest 
sister — a  free-lover  to  the  core,  also. 

"Come  in,"  she  cries,  in  hearty  fashion, 
"Come  right  in,  all  of  you.  Walk  into  the 
parlor.  It's  all  right.  This  is  just  like  a 
political  club  !  " 

And  into  this  Sunday-night  female  "  political 
club  "  these  strange  men  enter,  to  find  a  crowd 
of  other  men  and  a  few  women,  talking  excitedly 
on  free-love,  woman-suffrage,  female  presidency, 
and  like  appropriate  Sabbath-day  topics.  The 
room  is  just  what  we  should  have  expected  it 
to  be  ;  it  is  lined  with  big  mirrors,  and  a  great 
deal  of  gas  is  burning  and  the  principal  furniture 
is  chairs  and  sofas  to  accommodate  sitters. 

We  at  home  who  sit  cosily  around  our  five- 
dollar  second-hand  Table  at  breakfast  and  read 
the  account  in  the  newspapers  on  Monday 
morning,  say  to  each  other, 

"  What  a  home  ! 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan!          143 


XV. 

APROPOS  of  this  gaudy  home  (if  it  be  not 
wicked  to  call  it  by  a  name  so  dear),  the  con- 
versation turned  on  mirrors. 

"  Do  you  not  think  that  Americans  pay  too 
much  deference  to  the  mirror  as  an  object  of 
decoration  ?" 

"  Yes,"  said  I,  "a  mirror  is  a  French  impor- 
tation which  ought  to  be  used  sparingly.  One 
touch  too  much  of  mirror  makes  the  whole 

world  a  saloon." 
/ 

Give  me  some  white  and  gold,  some  red  satin 
and  plenty  of  mirrors  and  I  will  turn  you  out  a 
bar-room-like  parlor  enough  to  freeze  your 

blood. 

*. 

I  grant  you  that  these  ingredients  are  seduc- 
tive to  the  general  run  of  housekeepers  ;  but  I 
have  tested  them  and  know  how  unsatisfactory 
they  are.  At  one  period  of  my  life  I  lived  in 
such  a  parlor  as  this.  I  do  not  mean  I  occupied 
it  in  a  lodging-house.  I  mean  I  was  supposed 
to  be  the  mistress  of  it.  Do  not  ask  me  how 
supposed.  That  would  open  up  a  history  which  is 
too  long  to  be  printed  in  these  pages,  and  which 


144          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

will  perhaps  see  the  light  somewhere  else. 
Suffice  it  to  say  that  this  place  was  my  home. 
An  upholsterer  furnished  it  from  the  hanging  of 
the  pictures  to  the  placing  of  the  shovel  and 
tongs.  Not  one  small  atom  of  soul  was  in  the  rich 
furniture  and  the  soft  velvet  carpets ;  no  tinge 
of  heart  gleamed  through  the  folds  of  the  expen- 
Ksive  lace  curtains.  People  would  come  in  and 
sit  down  ;  and  at  first  they  would  say,  "  How 
handsome  your  parlors  are  ! "  but  somehow 
they  didn't  seem  to  make  themselves  right  com- 
fortable there.  No  woman  ever  brought  out 
her  knitting  and  spent  the  afternoon  ;  no  man 
ever  lounged  cosily,  peacefully  reading  a  news- 
paper or  a  magazine.  Full  of  expensive  fautcztt/s, 
there  wasn't  an  easy  chair  in  the  room. 

It  seemed  to  me  as  if  myself  and  everybody 
else  came  at  length  to  partake  of  the  qualities 
of  the  furniture.  Human  legs  turned  into  ma- 
hogany like  the  chairs ;  human  forms  were 
clothed  in  red  satin  lambrequins  like  the  win- 
dow curtains ;  human  eyes  were  polished 
French  looking-glass ;  human  cheeks  were 
ghastly  white  moulding ;  human  lips  were  gilt 
and  fresco. 

All  over  this  great  country  such  parlors  are 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,   Satan  !          145 

to  be  seen.  Here  in  New  York  there  are  hun- 
dreds and  hundreds  of  them.  You  know  what 
a  good  story  Rebecca  tells  about  her  visit  to 
her  old  schoolmate,  Harriet  B.  Harriet  had 
been  recently  married — (six  weeks  before  she 
was  married  her  beau  called  to  take  her  driving 
to  Central  Park  ;  she  flung  down  his  card  and 
stamped  on  it,  and  made  faces  in  the  direction 
of  the  parlor  where  he  was  sitting ;  then  she 
cried  out  "Darn  him  !  I'd  rather  pull  his  hair 
than  go  !  ") — um — um — where  was  I  ?  Oh,  to 
be  sure  !  She  struck  this  good  match  on  her 
flinty  heart,  and  he  became  a  flame.  So  they 
were  married,  and  had  recently  moved  into  a 
grand  new  house  in  Madison  Square.  Hatty 
was  famously  stuck  up  about  the  satin  furni- 
ture, and  the  pier-glasses  between  the  windows, 
and  the  big  square  mirrors  over  the  mantel- 
pieces, and  her  Steinway  Grand  (Hatty  can  play 
"The  Campbells  are  Coming"  pretty  well,  ex- 
cept that  she  makes  mistakes  in  the  bass),  and 
she  was  very  anxious  to  show  Rebecca  what 
she  had  got  in  return  for  suppressing  her  desire 
to  pull  hair.  So,  one  afternoon,  Rebecca  called 
and  was  ushered  into  the  satin  parlor,  and — 
very  naturally — she  sat  down. 


146           Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

Harriet  flew  down  stairs  to  meet  her,  dressed 
in  a  not  over-clean  wrapper,  but  then  she  said 
she  didn't  want  to  keep  Rebecca  waiting,  which 
was  kind.  They  kissed,  and  Rebecca's  heart 
swelled  with  pleasure  to  see  that  Hatty  was 
so  comfortably — or  rather  magnificently,  housed  ; 
for  our  blessed  Rebecca  has  a  heart  as  big  as  a 
mountain,  and  she  loves  Hatty  with  all  her  faults. 
Being  tired  she  sat  down  again,  having  risen  to 
greet  Hatty  when  she  came  in. 

But  strange  to  say,  Hatty  didn't  sit  down  ; 
she  stood  up  most  awkwardly,  and  bent  over 
Rebecca  sitting  there,  and  rattled  on  about  the 
no-end  of  fine  things  she'd  got — clothes  at  the 
dressmaker's,  and  three  new  hats,  and  a  promise 
of  a  Cashmere  shawl  from  her  husband,  and  a 
porcelain  dinner-service,  and  ever  so  much  fine 
linen.  But  all  the  time  she  seemed  so  fidgety, 
Rebecca  didn't  know  what  to  make  of  it. 

Finally  she  jerked  Rebecca's  arm,  and  said 
"  Becky,  come  look  out  of  the  window;  I  want 
to  show  you  something." 

But  there  wasn't  anything  special  to  see, 
and  when  they  turned  to  sit  down  again,  Hatty 
took  Rebecca's  arm,  and  chattering  inno- 
cently the  while,  walked  her  over  to  where  two 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan!          147 

wicker  chairs  were  standing,  and  almost  pushed 

her  into  one,  and  took  the  other  herself. 

* 
"  It  was  as  plain  as  the  nose  on  my  face," 

says  Rebecca — and  mercy  knows  that's  plain 
enough — "that  she  was  restless  because  I  was 
sitting  on  one  of  the  satin  chairs,  and  that's  the 
reason  she  didn't  sit  down  herself.  Those 
chairs  are  to  be  looked  at,  not  to  be  sat  down 
upon." 

Hatty  is  another  type  of  American  woman 
curious  enough  to  contemplate.  She  is  an 
almost  ideally  good  housekeeper  ;  and  sew  !  oh, 
how  her  fingers  do  fly  over  the  material !  and 
she's  as  neat  as  she  is  rapid.  She  says  she  won't 
ever  buy  a  sewing-machine,  nasty,  botchy,  and 
expensive  things.  She  can  sew  fast  enough  for 
her  purposes,  and  likes  her  dresses  made  every 
stitch  "just  so."  And  she  bakes  pies,  and  roasts, 
and  cleans  and  dusts,  and  rubs  the  brasses  till 
you  can  see  your  face  in  them.  She  can't  keep 
a  servant  long ;  not  one  of  them  is  up  to  her 
standard  of  excellence.  She  has  paid  for  that 
satin  furniture  long  ago,  by  scrimping  in  the 
kitchen.  Her  husband  dines  down  town,  and  she 
eats  bread  and  cheese  or  cold  meat  at  home. 


148  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

Her  husband  is  worth  only  about  three  hun- 
dred thousand  dollars,  and  they  are  anxious  to 
get  a  little  money  together  for  their  old  age. 

You'd  never  suspect  these  things  when  you 
were  looking  at  the  house  from  the  outside,  or 
contemplating  the  satin  furniture  and  pier- 
glasses  from  within,  or  meeting  Hatty  herself 
dressed  in  a  magnificent  silk  walking-suit  with 
frills  and  puffs  and  velvet  headings  and  thread- 
lace  edgings  innumerable.  You'd  think  that 
costume  came  from  Paris.  Oh  no — Hatty 
would  be  horrified  at  the  idea  of  wasting  her 
poor  husband's  money  in  that  way.  She 
bought  the  paper  pattern  for  twenty-five  cents, 
ransacked  every  shop  in  New  York,  not  to 
mention  Brooklyn,  to  get  the  material  at  its 
lowest ;  then  cut  and  basted  and  fitted  and 
finished  it  to  the  last  hook  and  eye  herself. 

Judging  from  the  European  standpoint,  and 
looking  at  this  elegant  house  from  the  oppo- 
site side  of  the  way,  and  perhaps  seeing  Hatty 
herself  coming  down  the  steps  dressed  in  her 
best,  you  would  say,  "This  is  the  abode  of  an 
aristocrat — well,  let  us  say  a  merchant  prince — 
that  is  his  lady  consort ;  the  house  is  full  of 
servants,  male  and  female,  and  dinners  are 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          149 

given  there    noted  for  reckless   profusion,  rich 
wines  and  dainty  dishes,  thrice  a  week." 

But  if  you  could  peer  in  through  the  roof  and 
see  Hatty  in  her  loose  and  unbecoming  wrap- 
per, munching  bread  and  cheese,  or  jerking  old 
friends  off  her  satin  chairs  and  planting  them  / 
down  on  rickety  wicker  ones,  you  would  perhaps 
say  "  So  ho  !  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Sham  live  here." 

I  shall  not  soon  forget  the  remark  of  a  young 
Englishman  newly  arrived  who  was  walking 
along  Michigan  Avenue  in  Chicago  one  day 
long  before  the  fire.  He  gazed  admiringly  at 
the  handsome  residences,  and  pointing  to  one 
which  was  rather  more  noticeably  gorgeous 
than  the  others,  he  said  to  his  friend  with  a 
sigh,  "  I  suppose  if  you  or  I  had  but  the  silver 
plate  which  is  in  that  house,  it  would  make  us 
rich  for  life." 

He  would  have  been  surprised  indeed  to 
learn  that  there  wasn't  a  silver  spoon  in  the 
house,  and  that  the  master  thereof  was  at  that 
moment  blacking  his  own  boots,  while  his  good 
wife  was  engaged  in  making  the  beds.  Nejther 
of  these  occupations  is  in  the  least  degrading ; 
but  being  ashamed  of  them  is.. 

The  Englishman's  observation  was  based  on 


1 50          Get  Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

that  wide-spread  and  excellent  English  custom 
which  ordains  that  no  man  should  (because  it  is 
unsafe)  spend  more  than  one-fifth  part  of  his  in- 
come for  house-rent.  But  these  Chicago  peo- 
ple, in  common  with  a  certain  number  of  people 
all  over  the  country,  were  living  in  a  house 
with  such  an  expensive  rent  that  every  quarter- 
day  they  were  half-distracted  how  to  scrape 
together  enough  to  pay  the  landlord. 
/  Oh,  what  a  miserable  soul-grinding  existence! 
Oh,  what  a  price  to  pay  for  the  shabby  sham  of 
living  behind  a  worse  than  grave-stone  front ! 

You  will  be  very  much  mistaken  if  you  sup- 
pose that  I  do  not  believe  in  economy  at  home. 
I  do.  I  believe  in  make-shifts  even,  when  they 
are  not  calculated  to  degrade  the  character  of 
I  the  make-shifter.  If  Hatty  had  married  a  poor 
,  all  those  traits  in  her  which  now  seem 
contemptible  would  become  virtues.  Having 
married  a  rich  man,  and  having  assumed  before 
the  world  to  keep  up  the  style  of  a  fashionable 
lady  in  an  elegant  home,  I  don't  admire  her 
bread-and-cheese  ways  or  her  little  tuppenny 
tricks  one  bit. 

If  I  had  a  husband  with  three  hundred  thou- 
sand dollars  (and  I  beg  you  not  to  believe  that  I 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  f          151 

want  anything  of  the  sort),  if  I  had  such  a  hus- 
band as  Hatty's,  and  such  a  home,  I  would 
show  my  consort  what  money  was  good  for. 
Instead  of  eating  bread-and-cheese  alone,  I 
would  have  my  friends  to  dinner,  and  give  them 
a  good  dinner,  every  day  in  the  week.  Instead 
of  spending  my  time  chasing  from  shop  to  shop 
to  get  a  yard  of  two-penny  tape  for  one  penny, 
I  would  buy  books  and  read  them,  songs  and 
sing  them,  pictures  and  enjoy  them ;  and  in 
every  way  I  could,  I  would  make  my  home  a 
joy  to  every  soul  that  came  near  it,  even  to  the 
professional  beggar-woman  who  makes  her  ev- 
erlasting fortune  going  from  basement  door  to 
door  with  a  basket  on  her  arm,  and  woe  in  her 
eyes— and  who  long  ago  learned  the  futility  of 
rapping  at  Hatty's  area-gate,  you  may  be  sure. 
Hatty  hates  beggars  worse  than  Betsy  Trot- 
wood  hated  donkeys,  and  drives  them  off  with 
much  the  same  frantic  indignation. 

As  my  lot  now  is,  I  wear  my  turned  black 
silks  with  a  light  heart,  and  thank  Heaven  that 
by  economies  such  as  this  and  others  ecjually 
legitimate  we  have  been  able  to  get  a  horne 
which  I  love  far  better  than  I  should  ever  love 
Hatty's. 


152  Get   Thee  beJnnd  Me,  Satan! 

I  know  a  woman  whose  husband  had,  in  the 
early  days  of  their  marriage,  but  one  white  duck 
suit ;  and  it  was  in  fact  the  only  suit  he  owned 
which  was  not  too  heavy  to  wear  during  a  long, 
hot  summer.  Now  this  nobly-proud  woman  ( 

» 

washed,  starched,  and  ironed  that  one  duck  suit  > 
every  single  night,  the  whole  summer  long,  and  / 
sent  hubbie  out  to  his  business  fresh  as  a  rose' 

s. 

every  morning.  She  made  no  sham  pretenses 
in  the  market-place  in  respect  to  the  large  num- 
ber of  white  duck  suits  her  husband  possessed; 
probably  no  one  ever  noticed  or  thought  any- 
thing about  it  except  to  see  how  sweetly  fresh 
and  clean  Neighbor  Jones  always  managed  to 
keep ;  but  I  tell  you  that  itjsthese  littlg^acts — 
of  goodness  or  the  reverse— which  make  up  our 
lives  and  by  which  we  shall  be  judged  ;  and  I 
firmly  believe  that  the  steam  of  those  nightly 
soapsuds  mounted  as  high  as  heaven  ;  and  that 
for  the  diurnal  washing,  starching,  and  ironing 
of  that  white  duck  suit,  Neighbor  Jones's  wife 
stands  accredited — under  the  equivalent  heads 
of  wifely  pride,  womanly  devotion,  and  beau- 
tiful marital  love — with  a  thousand  golden 
merit-marks  on  the  book  of  the  recording 
angel. 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan!          153 


XVI. 

SOMETIMES  people  say  to  me  "  The  truth  is, 
I  am  obliged  to  keep  up  an  appearance.  It 
would  hurt  me  in  my  business  if  people  were  to 
think  I  am  not  well  off.  I  must  make  a  show." 

It  was  this  logic  (not  mine,  but  that  of  anoth- 
er party,  and  I  was  overborne)  which  took  me 
into  that  ghastly,  bemirrored,  red  satin  and  gilt 
moulding  drawing- rooth  I  told  you  of  just  now. 
And  the  moral  of  the  story  would  be  lost  if  I 
failed  to  mention  that  it  was  exactly  this  move 
— of  seeming  to  be  in  possession  of  means 
which  he  had  not — which  lost  my  logician  the 
game.  He  befooled  everybody  so  well,  that  he\ 
befooled  the  people  who  employed  him.  They, 
seeing  the  style  he  was  living  in,  imagined  he 
must  be  robbing  them,  and  so  discharged  \ 
him. 

A  man  who  has  passed  years  in  a  community 
has  lived  an  arid  life  indeed,  if  his  worth  and 
excellence  have  not  penetrated  further  than  his 
own  household,  and  given  him  a  standing 
among  his  townsmen  which  money  can  neither 
add  to,  nor  take  from.  I  should  like  to  know 


1 54          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

if  Henry  Ward  Beecher  is  valued  by  his  com- 
munity on  account  of  his  income?  Or  is  it  on 
account  of  the  nourishing  food  for  mind  and 
heart  which  he  lavishes  for  all  men  and  women 
who  can  read,  and  for  the  few  thousands  who 
can  get  near  him  to  hear  ?  Is  Robert  Collyer 
thought  much  of  in  Chicago  for  any  style  in 
which  he  lives,  any  parties  he  gives  ?  Or  is  it 
for  the  beauty  which  he  throws  into  the  life 
which  now  is,  for  all  who  come  in  contact  with 
him  ?  * 

I    could   name   lawyers,    doctors,    merchants 

who   wield  a  similar  though  smaller  influence. 

/No  one  cares  whether  they  are  wealthy  or^not?) 

~     But  if  you  can  afford  to  live  in  fine_style,  and 

if  you  can  lead  a  better  and  nobler  life  in  a 

grand  mansion  than  you  can  in  a  modest  one — 

if  you  can  even  do  better  work  there,  why  then 

there  is  no  reason  whatever — social,  moral,  or 

religious — why    you    should    not  go    and   live 

there. 

Sometimes  we  make  great  mistakes  in  these 
expectations,  however.  I  knew  an  American 
lady  whose  contributions  to  the  English  press 
were  universally  admired  about  ten  years  ago. 
Many  of  her  choicest  effusions  were  written  on 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan!          155 

the  kitchen  table  ;  her  thoughts  on  the  manu- 
script, her  eyes  on  the  chops.  Sometimes  the 
soup  would  boil  over  while  she  was  in  the  mid- 
dle of  a  word,  and  she  had  to  drop  the  pen  and 
fly  to  remove  the  pot-lid.  Time  and  steam 
wait  for  no  authoress.  Also,  children  have 
little  respect  for  the  great  thoughts  which  move 
in  the  brain  of  the  mamma  who,  they  know 
from  experience,  can't  keep  a  nurse-girl.  Hence 
the  frequent  interruptions  from  little  tongues 
which  urged  "  bread  and  butter  !  "  —  "so 
sleepy!"  —  "drink  o'  water!"  —  "tell  me 
story!" — "take  me  walkin' !  " — "Johnnie  bit 
me  !  " — "  me  got  tummach-ache  !  " 

"Never  mind,"  she  would  say  to  me,  "one 
of  these  days  I  shall  have  an  elegant  study,  all 
to  myself ;  quiet ;  the  children  out  walking 
with  a  good,  kind  nurse  ;  a  beautiful  study 
hung  with  rich,  scholarly,  sombre  blue  velvet — 
with  a  carved  oak  desk — and  a  leathern  chair 
which  revolves— and  a  marble  bust  of  Pallas 
just  above  my  chamber  door.  Then  shall  I 
bring  forth  work  !  true  poetry,  rich  humor, 
sparkling  wit  that  outbubbles  the  wine  on  the 
Rhine.  You  shall  see  !  only  wait." 

We  waited.     Not  exactly  for  that  transforma 


1 56  Get   TJice  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

tion  which  seemed  as  likely  to  happen  as  that 
Aladdin  himself  should  appear,  and  bring  her  a 
blue  velvet  study  and  a  kind  nurse  and  put  a 
marble  bust  of  Pallas  just  above  her  chamber 
door ;  but  because — unless  we  committed  sui- 
cide— we  could  not  do  otherwise  than  wait. 

And  will  you  believe  it  ?  Almost  before  we 
knew  it,  See-saw,  whose  poverty-weighted  end 
had  been  tipped  to  the  very  ground  for  years 
with  this  poor  woman  on  it,  sprang  suddenly 
into  the  air  and  landed  her  high  and  dry  in  the 
blue  velvet  study  ! 

Not  a  detail  lacking  ;  the  good,  kind  nurse, 
the  pacified  children,  the  leathern  revolving 
chair,  the  marble  bust  of  Pallas  just  above  her 
chamber  door. 

And  the  work — the  true  poetry,  the  rich 
humor,  the  sparkling  wit  that  outbubbles  the 
wine  of  the  Rhine  ? 

Absent  from  the  roll-call ! 

She  never  knew  how  it  was,  but  what  she  did 
principally  in  the  revolving  chair  was  to  re- 
volve ;  the  blue  velvet  seemed  to  fold  about 
her  and  smother  inspiration ;  Pallas  hadn't  an 
idea  in  her  marble  head  ;  more  than  once  in 
despair  she  rushed  into  the  nursery,  scrubbed 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Safari  !          1 57 

the   children's   faces,    darned  their  socks,    and 
gave  the  nurse  a  half  holiday. 

"  Too  much  is  expected  of  me  now,"  she 
said  ;  "the  oaken  desk  would  feel  itself  insulted 
if  I  produced  no  finer  things  on  it  than  those  I 
brought  off  the  kitchen  table.  Crushed  by  this 
fear,  I  produce  nothing.  Then,  too,  the  room 
itself  is  a  constant  reproach.  It  seems  to  say 
1  Here  am  I,  madam,  an  excellent  room,  well 
lighted,  heated,  dry,  airy  and  well-furnished — a 
room  which  numbers  of  persons  as  refined,  as 
well-educated,  as  worthy  as  yourself  would 
gratefully  receive,  and  ask  no  better  housing  all 
the  rest  of  their  lives ;  and  you  forsooth  come 
here  lackadaisically  every  day,  and  twist  your- 
self on  my  son  that  revolving  chair,  or  stare 
impertinently  in  the  face  of  my  daughter  Miss 
Pallas,  and  yet  do  nothing  further  than  this  to- 
ward producing  a  masterpiece.  Come  now  ! — / 
•-  at  once  produce  a  masterpiece  ! ' ' 

The  rest  goes  without  saying — cela  va  sans 
dire.  She  wrote  no  more.  Her  literary  ability 
became  a  remembrance  only  —  a  once  upon  a 
time— a  long,  long  ago  ! 

And  does  it  follow  from  this  that  the  sacred 
fire  keeps  best  alight  near  the  kitchen  stove, 


158           Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan! 

and  the  divine  afflatus  needs  "  Gim'me  piece 
bread  and  butter  !  "  from  baby  lips  to  win  it  to 
life? 

That  depends. 

But  one  thing  is  clearly  proven  ;  and  that  is   \ 
that  a  blue  velvet  study  won't  write  your  new 
book  for  you. 

— By  the  way  (though  this  has  nothing  to  do 
with  the  subject),  isn't  it  curious  what  different 
influences  affect  different  writers  ?  W. ,  when 
he  wishes  to  write,  takes  down  a  volume  of 
Emerson's  Essays  and  tones  himself  up  with 
them,  until  he  gets  so  fully  into  the  Emersonian 
spirit  that  he  feels  like  another  Emerson  himselt 
— or  feels  that  he  would  like  to  be.  His  mind 
pitched — like  instruments  at  the  opera — to  the 
highest  intellectual  key,  he  sits  down  and  pro- 
duces something  better  than  he  would  otherwise 
have  done.  £  Aim  at  the  Bishop's  gown,  you'll 
1  get  one  of  the  sleeves.  \  But  for  me,  oh  dear  no, 
thank  you  ;  when  I  have  anything  to  write  I 
prefer  not  to  attack  such  an  intellectual  emi- 
nence as  Emerson.  He  crushes  me.  It  is  as  if 
Paganini  were  to  get  up  before  a  young  violinist 
and  play  for  an  hour  or  two  at  his  grandest ; 
then  say,  "  Come  now,  let's  see  what  you  can 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          159 

do. "  What  would  be  the  effect  of  this  ?  Would 
it  not  be  to  discourage  the  young  man  ?  Would 
he  not  be  likely  to  say,  "  Oh  dear  no,  there's  no 
use  trying.  If  violin-playing  has  been  carried 
with  the  aid  of  grand  genius  to  such  perfection 
as  that,  there's  no  use  my  hoping  to  succeed. 
I'll  give  up." 

I  can  only  write  by  remembering  that  I've  got  \ 
something  to  say — must  say  it.     As  for  literary  \ 
quality,  no  matter— my  audience  will  get  my 
meaning  into  their  heads  if  I  only  aim  at  their 
hearts.       So    I    write — from   the   heart   to   the 
heart ;  and  I  am  encouraged  in  doing  this  by 
finding  that  I  have  at  least  as  large  an  audience 
as   Emerson   has  ;    not   intellectual    prodigies,    . 
perhaps    (as   his   readers   are,  of   course) — but 
such  as  they  are,  God  made  them. 


XVII. 

WE  have  been  housekeeping  about  a  year. 

It  is  not  pride  of  ownership  that  makes  me 
say  we  have  a  beautiful  house ;  and  when  I  say 
beautiful,  I  refer  to  the  beauty  which  comes 
from  comfort,  from  desirable  "  improvements," 


160       f  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

improvements  which  really  improve  ;  not  from 
an  imposing  frontal,  nor  a  mansard  roof.  Yet 
there  is  gas  in  every  room,  the  kitchen  by  no 
means  excepted,  hot  and  cold  running  water  all 
over  the  house,  stationary  washtubs,  great  clos- 
ets, large  enough  to  serve  on  a  pinch  as  bed- 
rooms, and  other  snug  household  comforts  such 
as  servants  delight  in. 

For  a  week  or  two  we  got  along  with  no  other 
servant  than  a  charwoman — not  that  she  called 
herself  by  this,  or  any  other  convenient  name. 
She  was  Mis  Cox,  a  married  woman,  charged  a 
dollar  and  a  half  a  day  and  her  board,  came 
late,  went  early,  ate  tremendously,  worked  the 
reverse.  We  soon  saw  that  we  must  have  a 
permanent  girl  ;  for  Mis  Cox  numbered  among 
her  other  eccentricities  a  habit  of  not  coming  at 
all,  some  days,  leaving  us  in  grave  astonishment 
and  breathless  breakfastlessness. 

Sister  Rebecca  put  on  her  bonnet  and  went 
to  what  Mis  Cox  called  the  Intelligent  office. 
What  happened  when  she  got  there  I  know  not ; 
but  this  is  certain  :  when  she  came  home  the 
cupboard  was  bare  and  so  the  poor  dog  (and 
people)  had  none  (i.e.  no  food,  for  I  feel  that  I 
must  explain  this). 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          161 

Eureka !  She  has  found  her  !  Treasure 
trove  !  a  girl  ! 

She  happened  to  be  a  middle-aged  woman, 
Irish,  sulky.  If  she  had  been  a  wild  horse  of 
the  Pampas,  and  Rebecca  had  lassoed  her  and 
dragged  her  to  our  corral  with  the  rope  hanging 
around  her  neck,  she  could  not  have  looked 
more  restive  and  discontented.  We  agreed  to 
pay  her  fifteen  dollars  a  month  wages  and  get 
a  second  girl  to  help  her  as  soon  as  possible. 
And  we  took  her  without  a  recommendation. 
We  thought  it  unwise  to  ask  her  for  it,  fearing 
she  would  take  offense  and  go  away  without 
getting  us  our  dinner.  Rebecca  was  quite  capa- 
ble of  getting  it  for  us  ;  but  through  Mis  Cox's 
defections  she  had  got  dinners  and  washed  dishes 
till  she  was  tired  out. 

"Be  plased  to  show  me  over  the  house, 
Mim,"  said  our  Acquisition. 

On  timid  inquiry  we  found  our  Acquisition's 
name  to  be  Bridget.  Yes,  she  was  the  celebra- 
ted Bridget  we  had  so  often  read  about. 

Rebecca  showed  her  over  the  house,  into 
every  room,  every  nook,  every  cranny.  It  is 
just  possible  that  in  her  pride  at  our  newly- 
bought  nouse,  Rebecca  may  have  expected  that 


1 62  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

there  would  fall  some  words  of  commendation 
from  the  lips  of  Bridget.  If  so,  she  was  disap- 
pointed. Not  a  sound  was  heard,  not  a  funeral 
note. 

At  length  Rebecca  said:  "You  see  there  is 
everything  of  the  most  convenient  character, 
water,  gas,  &c.  We  have  just  moved  in,  and 
things  are  of  course  unsettled  ;  but  the  carpets 
are  all  down,  and  anything  that  is  too  heavy  for 
you  to  do  we  shall  have  done  by  a  man.  This 
is  your  room." 

A  bright,  cheerful  little  third-story  back, 
with  a  clean  bed,  and  a  large  soft  rug  on  the 
floor,  and  abundant  shelves,  and  even  a  bottle 
of  holy  water — left  there  by  Mis  Cox. 

Mutism  continued  on  the  part  of  Bridget. 

Nothing  more  remaining  to  be  shown  this 
fastidious  person,  they  descended  to  the  kitchen. 
Rebecca  began  giving  her  instructions  for 
dinner. 

"You  will  boil  this  rice,  please,  Bridget,  and 
bake  those  potatoes  ;  and — " 

"Ye  nadent  tell  me  fwat  to  do,  Mini;  I'm 
not  going  to  shtop,  Mim  ;  the  place  don't  shoot 
me,  Mim." 

"  Oh,  very  well,"  said  our  marvellously  cool 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          163 

sister  (Vesuvius  was  nothing  to  me,  when  I 
heard  this),  "  but  don't  think  of  going  till  after 
dinner.  You'll  be  hungry."  • 

The  ruse  succeeded.  After  dinner  was  over, 
Bridget  slung  on  her  shawl,  banged  the  base- 
ment door,  and  left  us  alone  in  our  glory. 

Now  for  the  sum  of  one  dollar  Rebecca  had 
purchased  the  right  to  draw  blank  girls  out  of 
the  Intelligent  office  lottery  for  the  space  of 
one  month,  by  which  time  she  was  supposed  to 
have  drawn  her  prize  ;  if  not,  she  could  gamble 
in  servant-girls  for  another  month,  and  another, 
and  so  on  till  chaos  comes  again,  or  her  dollars 
give  out.  But  fancy  the  uninviting  prospect  of 
marching  in  a  procession  of  Bridgets  at  the 
front  door,  only  to  see  them  march  themselves 
out  at  the  basement  ditto  ! 

Once  again  Rebecca's  fairly-like  form  con- 
fronted the  monarch  of  the  Intelligent  office. 
He  was  surprised  that  that  girl  should  have 
acted  so.  She  was  a  splendid  girl — truly  sp — 
lendid  !  Unfortunately  there  was  not  another 
girl  in  the  place. 

This  was  discouraging. 

But  he  had  others  elsewhere  ;  oh,  yes.  His 
resources  were  limitless.  He  had  a  French 


1 64          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

girl — at  home  now  with  her  husband,  but  he 
would  send  a  note  to  her,  she  would  gladly 
come— a  superb  cook  !  Did  we  like  French 
cookery  ?  Should  think  we  did  ?  All  right, 
then.  The  only  trouble  was  that  she  was 
just  over  from  France  and  didn't  speak  a 
word  of  English.  Oh,  we  had  a  lady  in  the 
house  who  could  speak  French  !  That  was 
fortunate.  Now,  if  by  any  chance  she  should 
be  already  engaged,  he  had  a  German  girl, 
excellent  girl,  but  she  only  spoke  German. 
Never  mind,  we  had  a  gentleman  in  the  house 
who  spoke  German.  Then  there  was  no  longer 
any  fear  of  our  not  getting  somebody. 

Rebecca  was  growing  desperate.  She  told 
him  to  send  us  a  girl,  no  matter  what  her  na- 
tionality. O.  spoke  French,  and  W.  spoke 
German,,  and  Algie  talked  Hog  Latin  like  a 
native  hog ;  and  if  necessary,  the  first  two 
would  leave  their  business,  and  Algie  would 
stay  home  from  school,  and  the  whole  three  of 
us  would  go  sit  in  a  row  in  the  kitchen  and 
devote  our  entire  time  and  energies  to  transla- 
ting the  housekeeper's  orders  to  the  cook. 

By  showing  such  an  accommodating  spirit  as 
this,  the  Intelligent  man  became  convinced, 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          165 

that,  though  it  was  not  for  mortals  to  com- 
mand success,  we  certainly  deserved  it.  He 
politely  begged  Rebecca  to  go  home  now,  and 
before  long  the  coveted  girl  would  surely  be 
forthcoming. 

At  the  end  of  twenty-four  hours,  she  forth- 
came. 

Would  you  believe  it,  she  was — 

But  why  should  I  ask  Would  you  believe  it  ? 
Of  course  you  will  believe  it.  You  will  find  it 
not  at  all  difficult  to  believe.  Such  persons  are 
not  rare.  They  may  be  counted  by  millions. 
But  then  to  us  it  was  such  a  surprise.  Be- 
cause, the  man  had  not  hinted  at  such  a  thing, 
and  there  was  not  the  slightest  indication  of  his 
office  transacting  business  for  these  people. 
She  was  Black. 

Oh,  but  Black — even  with  a  capital  letter — is 
no  word  for  her.     She  was  a  chimney-pot — she 
was  a  black   marble   statue  on  a  black    marble 
monument  on  a  moonless,  starless  night.     She  '•< 
was  hot,  too,  as  well  as  black,  and  in  perspiring  J 
exuded  ink. 

Our  geraniums  thrive  like  weeds,  and  their\ 
sweet  odor  fills  all  the   air  ;  but  it  was  hot,  and   \ 
Sarah  Hoggins  perspired   ink,  and   the  flower-       ) 


1 66          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

pots  arose  as  one  man,  presented  her  the  hilt  of 
their  perfumed  sword,  and  avowed  themselves 
vanquished. 

She  held  out  a  torn  slip  of  very  dirty  pink 
paper,  and  though  it  was  greasy — perhaps 
having  been  used  on  some  occasion  to  wrap  a 
quarter  pound  of  butter  in — we  managed  to 
decipher  the  glad  tidings  that  this  was-  Sarah 
Hoggins,  and  she  had  Been  living  with  Me  / 
mons.  She  had  always  found  Her  Honnest. 
If  anybody  wanted  a  Honnest  woman  they 
would  Do  well  to  engage  Sarah  for  she  had 
found  Her  to  be  Honnest..  Mrs.  T.  Jones. 

We  retired  into  an  adjoining  room  to  lay  our 
heads  together.  The  result  was :  an  extra- 
ordinary unanimity  of  feeling  against  employ- 
ing a  black  woman.  Fully  recognizing  the 
undoubted  merits  of  hundreds  and  hundreds  of 
clean,  intelligent  and  worthy  black  women,  we 
also  recognized  the  extreme  doubtfulness  of 
Sarah  Hoggins  belonging  to  this  class. 

Besides,  Rebecca's  mother  (our  mothers, 
though  far  away,  were  still  our  guiding  stars) 
had  never  employed  a  colored,  person  ;  mine 
had,  and  didn't  like  her.  .  Algie's  argument 
was  couched  in  f  excellent  hog-English  (he 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          167 

wields  a  good  knife  and  fork,  the  boy  does)  :, 
"  You  couldn't  tell  whether  her  hands  were 
clean  or  dirty  when  she  was  kneading  the  pie- 
crust." W.'s  was  powerful  and  unanswerable: 
"  She  smells  bad." 

"  Now  look  here,"  said  Rebecca,  "let  us  be 
reasonable." 

We  immediately  proceed  to  be  reasonable. 

"  Do  we  or  do  we  not  want  a  girl  ?  " 

"  We  do,  we  do  !  "  chorus  of  Slaves. 

"  Then  let  us  take  this  one." 

"She's  black!" 

"  What  of  it  ?  I'm  tired  out.  I'd  take  her 
if  she  was  green." 

"  Perhaps  she  is — green  and  black,  too." 

"  No  repartee  allowed,  because  I  haven't 
time  to  think  what  to  say  back,"  says  Rebecca. 
"  I  concede  the  undeniable  fact  that  Sarah  is  a 
colored  person." 

"Colored!  She's  blacker  than  the  ace  of 
spades  !  "  growls  Algie. 

"Well,  friends,  again  I  ask,  what  of  it? 
Why,  good  gracious  !"  and  our  quiet  Rebecca 
lifted  her  hands  deprecatingly,  "  this  is  growing 
political !  Can  it  be  that  this  dining-room  is 
an  amateur  Senate  ?  Is  the  old  prejudice 


1 68  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

against  color  again  springing  up  ?  Are  we 
Southern  Oligarchs  —  Dixian  aristocrats  — 
pecunious  Conservatives  ?  " 

We  regretfully  reply  that  we  are  not.  We 
are  people  with  a  big  Wash  on  hand,  and  three 
meals  a  day  to  get,  and  we  want  a  girl. 

"Then  take  Hoggins.  Let  the  bells  go 
ringing  for  Sarah." 

To  this  we  finally  agree.  Whatever  else 
she  may  be,  it  appears  Sarah  Hoggins  is 
honest.  Mrs.  T.  Jones  asserts  it.  Who  Mrs. 
T.  Jones  is  we  know  not,  and  have  no  means 
of  knowing.  But  we  want  an  honest  girl.  We 
do  not  desire  that  our  watches  shall  be  stolen 
nor  our  pockets  picked.  Honesty  is  the  best 
policy !  It  is  our  best  policy  to  take  honesty 
and  Sarah. 

Our  minds  fully  made  up,  we  march  in  to  the 
culprit.  She  seems  far  less  concerned  than  we 
are,  and  is  adjusting  her  boot-lace  with  a  more 
extended  display  of  dirty  stocking  than  is 
pleasing  to  an  aesthetic  taste. 

She  is  certainly  a  grotesque  figure,  as  she 
stands  up  to  receive  our  decision.  She  is  ex- 
actly the  negro  wench  of  the  Minstrel  stage. 
She  wears  an  immense  woolly,  wobbly  water- 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          169 

fall,  and  an  absurd  little  hat  garnished  with  red 
and  yellow  flowers,  pulled  down  over  her  eyes 
and  resting  on  her  fat  greasy  nose.  Her  dress 
sticks  up  behind,  and  shows  the  heels  of  her 
worn-out  boots.  Her  shawl  is  a  flame — sub- 
dued by  dirt — of  yellow  and  red.  Her  fingers 
are  covered  with  brass"  rings.  She  takes  back 
Mrs.  T.  Jones's  valuable  contribution  to  litera- 
ture, and  opening  her  dress  she  sticks  it  into 
her  bosom.  We  now  understand  why  the  pink 
paper  was  greasy. 

She  grumbles  at  our  fifteen  dollars  a  month, 
says  she  has  always  had  sixteen,  and  before  we 
can  answer  says  All  right,  she'll  take  it.  Then 
we  tell  her  that  we  want  her  to  get  at  the  wash- 
ing immediately;  at  which  she  looks  surprised, 
as  if  it  were  quite  strange  that  people  should 
have  washing.  To  be  sure,  she  can't  have  much. 

She  goes  upstairs  to  prepare  herself,  and 
when  she  comes  down  she  is  so  altered  that  we 
think  it  must  be  another  woman.  The  water- 
fall has  gone  off  her  head,  and  all  her  gorgeous 
rigging  has  vanished  ;  leaving  her  bare  poles — 
to  speak  nautically — enshrouded  in  a  light  and 
dirty  calico  wrapper,  cut  bias,  loose  at  the 
waist,  and  trailing  in  rags  behind  her  on  the 


170          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

ground.  She  immediately  asks  for  a  bottle  of 
oxalic  acid. 

Perhaps  you  think  we  were  surprised  at  this. 
I  was ;  but  Rebecca  to  my  astonishment  went 
and  produced  what  she  asked  for,  as  compla- 
cently as  if  it  were  the  vinegar-cruet. 

"  She  wants  it  to  clean  the  boiler,"  said 
Rebecca. 

But  as  she  never  did  clean  the  boiler,  this 
was  a  mistake.  She  kept  that  bottle  three 
days  and  I  was  in  agony  the  whole  time. 

I  frankly  confess  here  and  now,  that  there 
are  two  things  I  am  afraid  of:  one  is  a  kerosene 
lamp,  the  other  is  a  bottle  of  oxalic  acid.  The 
first  I  expect  to  explode  every  moment ;  the 
second  I  expect  to  up  and  pour  itself  down  our 
stomachs  and  kill  us  whether  we  will  or  no. 

When  Sarah  returned  it,  the  bottle  was 
empty. 

Rebecca's  theory  was  that  she  must  have 
poured  it  into  the  boiler-full  of  clothes.  Every- 
thing was  faded,  torn,  lay  around  wet  for  a 
week,  and  became  hopelessly  mildewed. 

Sarah  soon  developed  an  unsuspected  ability 
for  heavy  profanity,  and  for  falling  to  sleep 
every  time  she  sat  down.  As  she  sat  down 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan!          171 

pretty  constantly,  her  slumbers  were  frequent. 
We  bore  it  all  as  long  as  we  could.  Then  we 
told  her  she  must  go.  She  was  furious.  She 
said  that  she  would  be  profaned  if  she'd  gwo 
without  a  monf's  pay;  she  wuz  a  po'  culled 
guhl  an'd  been  a  slabe  all  her  days,  an*  now  she 
had  come  Norf  she'd  be  profaned  if  she'd  gwo 
'out  her  money. 

Algie  here  remarked  to  her  that  she'd  better 
go  before  his  father  came  home,  or  she'd  be 
arrested  for  bad  language. 

To  this  Sarah  replied  that  as  for  dat  profane 
sassy  boy  she'd  knock  his  excessively  profane 
head  off  if  he  didn't  hold  his  sassy  tongue. 

Here  W.  did  come  in,  and  asked,  man-fash- 
ion, "What's  all  this?" 

Sarah  became  as  meek  as  a  lafftb,  and  went 
off  up-stairs  for  her  bundle. 

While  she  was  gone  Algie  told  the  story  of 
Sarah's  remarks,  and  when  W.  went  to  pay  her 
he  said, 

"  I'm  sorry  you  should  think  it  necessary  to 
swear,  Sarah.  That  won't  do  at  all.  You  must 
unlearn  that,  if  you  are  going  to  live  in  respect- 
able families." 

"  Fo'    de    Lord,    boss,"    said    Sarah,    with\ 


1/2  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

eyes  as  big  as  saucers,  "  I  nevah  cussed  a 
dam." 

Sarah  left  her  bundle  in  the  basement  hall 
while  she  went  looking  for  another  place,  and 
privately  informed  Algie,  who  turned  the  door- 
key  on  her,  that  if  we  stole  anything  out  of  it 
while  she  was  gone  she'd  have  us  all  up  befo' 
de  jedge. 

Whereupon  Rebecca  untied  her  bundle  at 
once,  and  searched  it  carefully  for  spoons.  But 
there  were  none.  We  had  watched  her  too 
closely. 

Sarah  got  another  place  immediately  (so  great 
is  the  demand)  and  in  two  days  an  indignant 
gentleman  came  ringing  like  mad  at  our  door- 
bell. Honest  Hoggins  had  stolen  his  silver, 
taken  his  baby-clothes,  and  now  he  came  to  us 
to  know  how  it  was  we  had  ventured  to  vouch 
for  such  a  creature  ! 

She  had  simply  told  him  that  she  had  lived 
with  us  three  months,  and  that  we  would  give 
her  a  character,  and  he  and  his  household  were 
too  lazy  or  too  careless  to  verify  her  statement. 

And  now  the  clouds  pass  by,  as  black  Sarah 
moves  off  the  scene,  and  we  arrive  at  the  moral 
of  this  story ;  without  which  the  foregoing 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          173 

would  have  no  point  ;  and  this  is,  the  entrance 
into  our  home  of  Norah,  our  young,  gentle, 
amiable,  beautiful  girl,  our  cook  and  our  friend. 
I  Norah  had  tried  marrying,  and  found  that  Love\ 
wouldn't  boil  the  pot ;  that  sewing-machine 
operators  were  not  in  great  demand,  and  not 
well  paid  ;  that  a  sick  husband  was  a  bad  thing 
to  have  in  a  penniless  house ;  so  she  procured 
quarters  for  him,  and  prepared  to  pay  his  board 
by  going  out  to  service.  She  is  happy  with  us, 
I  am  sure,  and  now  that  a  widow's  cap  brings 
out  in  its  snowy  whiteness  the  dark  gloss  of  her 
brown  hair  the  chances  of  our  separating  are 
remote.  We  are  a  little  selfish  as  regards  Norah 
perhaps.  We  cannot  but  hope  she  will  not 
marry  again.  It  really  does  not  seem  to  us  that 
her  lot  in  life  should  be  that  thankless  one  which 
she  owns  who  plays  the  part  of  the  strong  vine 
that  upholds  the  rotten  oak. 

"  But  granting  that  your  Norah  is  a  superior 
young  woman,  what  is  she,  after  all,"  you  ask, 
"  but  a  servant  ?  " 

And  what  are  we  all  but  servants  ?  You, 
reader,  are  the  servant  to  somebody.  And  I 
who  write  to  you  am  your  servant.  You  have 
a  habit  of  buying  books  at  certain  seasons  of 


1/4          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan! 

the  year,  and  to  reach  one  of  these  seasons  I 
must  needs  write  early  and  late,  and  so  serve 
you.  I  serve  you  gladly,  it  is  true.  I  love  to 
write.  Ten  books  the  size  of  this  would  not 
hold  all  I  have  to  say  to  you  at  this  very 
moment. 

Again,  I  am  advertised  to  lecture.  I  am 
tired ;  my  head  aches  ;  I'd  rather  not.  But  I 
am  a  servant — contract  signed  and  sealed,  my 
liberty  for  a  certain  hour  bought  from  me,  my 
wages  ready  to  be  paid  me  when  I  shall  earn 
them.  Who  shall  doubt  that  I  am  a  servant  ? 

If  I  cannot  serve  you  as  well  when  I  am 
married  as  when  I  was  single,  you  will  very 
naturally  discharge  me  in  spite  of  the  strong 
signs  of  appreciation  which  you  have  hitherto 
shown  me  ;  and  you  will  be  quite  right. 

r  Thus  it  often  happens  that  a  woman  must 
choose  between  marriage  and  service.  Some- 
where in  the  future  let  us  hope  there  will  be  a 
state  of  affairs  so  millennial  that  these  two  things 

\  may  not  conflict  with  each  other  so  sadly  as 
they  do  in  our  day. 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan!          175 


XVIII. 

DID  you  ever  have  a  day  of  complete  dis- 
couragement ?  Of  course,  yes.  Everybody 
has  them.  Longfellow  says  : 

("Into  some  hearts  the  rain  must  fall, 
Some  days  must  be  dark  and  dreary.  "J 

The  rain  has  fallen  in  torrents  for  me  to-day, 
though  the  sun  has  been  shining  gloriously  in 
»the  heavens.     I  feel  as  if  I  had  accomplished 
nothing.     Yet  I  have  written  eighteen  pages. 

Eighteen  pages  about  Love — and  I  feel  as  if 
;  I  had  been  trying  to   dip  up  the   ocean  with  a  j 
V spoon.     I   crumple  the  eighteen  pages  in  my 
hand  and  toss  them  in  the  fire  which  burns  upon 
our  hearth  this  cool  evening  in  early  spring. 

How  can  people  analyze  you,  Love  ?  It 
seems  to  me  that  the  more  I  write  the  farther  I 
am  away  from  any  expression  of  you  ! 

Love  is  so  deep,  so  moving,  so  profound,  that  \ 
my  mind  stands  with  a  helpless  feeling,  half  awe, 
half  despair,  looking  into  the  abysmal   depths, 
in  which  my  heart  wanders  as  freely  as  a  childx 
in  a  "ower-garden. 


176          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan! 

I  cannot  think  that  it  is  ahvaysjshe  who  loves 
most  deeply  who  writes  most  clearly  on  this 
subject. 

You  know  George  Sand  has  analyzed  the 
passion  in  its  every  stage  ;  has  pictured  love 
spiritual,  physical,  moral,  immoral,  material  and 
immaterial  ;  yet  her  life  has  been  such  a  record 
of  free-love  impurities  that  I  cannot  believe  she 
ever  had  one  glimpse  of  true  love  whispered  to 
her  by  the  voice  of  her  own  heart. "\ 


She  has  been  beloved ;  no  doubt  of  that. 
Jules  Sandeau  (for  whom  she  left  her  husband, 
and  a  part  of  whose  name  she  appropriated  in 
literature)  loved  her  dearly ;  Chopin  madly ; 
Alfred  de  Musset  passionately. 

She  awakened  so  many  sentiments  in  a  man's 
breast ;  admiration  for  her  beauty,  her  brilliant 
conversation,  pride  in  her  genius,  honor  for  her 
magnificent  literary  work.  All  these  drew  men 
towards  her.  This  man  loved  her  because  of 
all  her  attractions ;  that  other  for  some  one  of 
them  alone  ;  and  each  and  every  one  of  these 
lovers  she  has  laid  on  a  dissecting-table,  and 
opened  every  artery  with  her  keen  knife  and 
laid  bare  its  workings  before  her  class  of 
amazed  students — her  readers. 


Get   Thee  beliind  Me,  Satan  !          177 

She  has  given  us  some  rare  pictures  of  love. 
If  she  had  ever  truly  loved,  could  she  have  laid 
it  on  her  page  so  clearly  ? 

.  It  was  the  current  report  in  the  literary  circle 
in  which  I  mingled  in  Paris  (of  which  Thack-1 
eray  was  the  shining  light)  that  jshe  drew  men\ 
on  to  falMn  love  with  her,  one  after  another, — 
like  those  lovely  nymphs  in  Rhine  legend 
whom  mortals  love  only  to  be  destroyed, — that 
she  might  have  a  new  experience  to  present  to 
the  public  of  this  marvellous  mystery  of  the 
human  heart. 


We  are  sitting  around  the  Table,  in  the  even- 
ing.    I  appeal  to  the  circle. 

"  Come,"  I  say.     "  My  day's  work  has  gone 
for  nothing.     You  must  help  me  out.     Tell  me 
something  about  Love.     I  will  act  as  reporter 
of  the  meeting.    Rebecca  shall  begin.    Rebecca, 
what  can  you  tell  me  about  Love  ?  " 
/  Rebecca  smiles  in  that  quaint  way  of  hers.  1*7^ 
"  If  you  will  tell  me  what  Truth  is,"  she   says,y 
i"  I  will  tell  you  what  Love  is." 

"  Worthy  of  a  philosopher,  Rebecca.     Algie, 
it  is  your  turn.     Give  me  your  idea  of  Love." 

For  his   answer,  Algie  puts   his  arms  about 


1 78  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

my  neck  and  gives  me  a  rousing  kiss  on  the 
cheek. 

"  Good  boy  !     Now,  husband  !  " 

"Apropos  of  George  Sand,"  says  W. ,  "I 
was  looking  at  her  portrait  to-day,  in  the  Brus- 
sels album.  On  the  opposite  page,  is  the  por- 
trait of  Jules  Sandeau,  her  romantic  lover. 
They  are  recent  portraits — I  bought  them  in 
Paris  last  summer.  They  show  me  an  old 
woman  and  an  old  man  ;  and  they  are  pathetic 
pictures  to  me — the  pictures  of  two  lonely, 
loveless  old  persons,  to  whom  life  must  be  a 
sad  and  fruitless  thing.  This,  it  seems  to  me, 
is  a  consideration  withjregard  to  Love,  which 
all  loose-minded  persons  overlook.  It  is  over- 
looked by  such  persons  as  Mr.  Trotman  and 
Mrs.  Freelove,  in  their  disposition  to  make  a 
virtue  of  that  fickle  and  unstable  disposition 
some  people  possess — to  whom  marriage  is  a 
galling  bond  because  it  holds  them  to  a  stead- 
fast loyalty  against  which  they  naturally  rebel. 
It  needs  no  prophet  to  predict  the  old  age  of 
Mrs.  Freelove.  It  will  be  loveless  ;  and  a  love- 
less old  age  is  dreadful  to  think  upon.  Wecan 
do  withoutTlove  in  our  younger  days,  when  we 
are  strong  and  self-reliant,  and  when  the  prom- 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan!          179 

ise  of  love  rests  ever  in  the  future.  Even  in 
middle  age  there  is  alway¥~roorrTTor  hope,  on 
the  part  of  the  person  who  is  without  love. 
But  when  one  has  reached  old  age,  and  is  still  a 
wanderer  up  and  down  the  earth,  companion- 
less,  childless,  homeless,  that  must  be  bitter — 
and  especially  bitter  if,  besides,  the  poor  old. 
creature  has  to  look  back  upon  a  life  crowded- 
with  light  loves,." 

I  haveTcnown  more  than  one  such  woman  as 
this,  and  I  always  shudder  when  I  see  another 
treading  the  path  where  so  many  have  been 
lost.  Vanityj^the  root  of  this  tejrihlF  frrnr 
A  woman  passes  thirty,  and  is  still  a  charming 
woman  ;  men  flock  about  her,  and,  to  outrival 
early  youth  and  beauty  which  surround  her  in 
the  shape  of  young  girls,  she  throws  to  her 
admirers  an  appetizing  bait — an  admission  of 
her  almost  conversion  to  free-love  principles. 
A  fatal  lure  ;  fatal  to  the  chances  of  young  and 
innocent  girls  whose  youth  and  innocence  are  as 
the  healthful  bread  of  life— men  cast  them  aside 
and  call  for  the  hot  brandy  of  vice — fatal  thus  to 
the  men,  but  most  fatal  of  all  to  the  wretched 
tempter-woman  who  is  sure  to  be  loathed  and  * 
flung  away  at  last. 


I  So          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan! 

I  have  known  of  many  so-called  loves  which 
braved  society  by  an  illegal  alliance,  and  sought 
to  command  respect  by  promising  to  show  the 
world  a  constancy  which  would  amaze  it.  And 
'a  few  years  passed,  and  behold  a  bitter,  soured 
couple,  chafing  under  galling  bonds,  ashamed 
I  to  look  their  children  in  the  face,  hating  each 
other  for  having  been  the  cause  of  this  faux 
pas,  longing  to  fly  from  their  companion,  but 
staying  together  because  they  were  too  proud 
to  confess  to  the  world  that  it  was  right  after 
all,  and  they  were  wicked,  sinful,  and  head- 


Sometimes  an  old  coquette  will  have  as  many 
"  grandes  passions"  on  hand  at  once  as  a  young 
girl  has  partners  at  her  first  ball.  False  to  the 
core  herself,  she  yet  rails  at  men  because  of 
their  inconstancy.  I  have  heard  such  women 
1  talk  in  a  way  that  turned  me  sick  with  disgust. 

I 

I  have  known  women  of  this  sort  who  moved  in 
the  best  society  and  kept  up  an  outward  show 
of  respectability  while  they  were  carrying  on 
correspondences  with  married  men  (they  th'em- 
selves  also  being  married)  and  whom  I  have  seen 
besot  themselves  with  liquor  and  stench  them- 
selves with  cigarettes,  and  then  sit  down  in  a 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan!          181 

half  maudlin  state  and  curse  men  for  their  infi- 
delity ;  couple  their  abuse  of  the  opposite  sex\ 
with  profanity,  obscenity,  and  sacrilegious  bias-  I 
phemy,  till  I  have  wept  tears  of  horror  and  pity 
for  them. 

Of  course   these  women   do    not   confess  to 
absolute  criminality  ;  every  "afjfeir  "  is  going  to 
be  the  one  affair  of  their  lives  now ;   and  th 
next  you  hear  is,  if  you  happen  to  be  so  unfor- 
tunate as  to  be  the  receiver  of  their  confidences,  J 
that  that  man  was  a  heartless,  faithless  scoun^/ 
drel,  curse  him  !     And  there  is  another  man  onN 
the  carpet  now  invested  with  all  the  virtues —    \ 
until  his  hour  for  disgust  and  loathing  of  the     ! 
woman  comes,  and  he  too  throws  her  off;  and  I 
so  goes  on  the  weary  round. 
/  A  woman  may  sin  and  marry  and  reform  \) 
purified  by  the  holy  love  of  a  good  man,  upheld 
by  his  goodness  and  strength,  she  may  lay  her 
head  on  his  shoulder  and  honestly  look  in  his 
eyes  and  not  quail  before  them,  so  long  as  she 
is  true_to  him.     This  is  a  history  often  enacted 
in    real   life,    often    touchingly   told    in    fiction. 
Wicked    indeed   would    be    the    meddler   who 
should  dare  to  break  up  by  calumny  and  slander 
such  love  and  repentance  as  are  here  presented. 


1 82          Get   TJiee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

I  honor  the  man  whose  love  is  strong  enough  to 


the  past  of  the  woman  to  whom  he 
has   made  up   his  jnjnd   to    give   his    name,   to 
>  m^  whpig  hands  he  has  resolved  to  trust  his  honor 
and  rely  upon  her — spite  of  her  past — to  keep 
it  untainted. 

You  have  heard  the  story  of  the  Marquis  de 
Boissy ;  (I  think  that  was  his  name,  but  if  it 
was  something  else  it  doesn't  matter)  the  French 
nobleman  who  married  the  Countess  Guiccioli. 
The  lady's  name  as  given  now  was  so  frequently 
rated  that  many  titters  and  neck-stretchings 
were  heard  and  seen  when  she  made  her  ap- 
pearance in  society's  gatherings. 

"The  Countess  Guiccioli!"  was  more  than 
once  said  in  the  hearing  of  Monsieur  de  Boissy, 
"  Why  is  not  that  the  lady  who  was  the — ha ! 
ha  ! — the  particular  friend  of  Lord  Byron?" 

"  The  same,  sir,"  answered  the  Marquis,  with 
a  polite  bow  ;  then  lifting  his  form  to  its  most 
erect  position  and  lightly  tapping  his  sword-hilt, 
he  added,  "  and  I  am  the  Marquis  de  Boissy, 
her  husband." 

I  never  heard  that  the  wife  proved  false  to 
this  noble  protection. 

Poor   railing   woman-}     You  who  curse  men 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan!          183 

and  their  infidelity ;  who  dare  to  sneer  at  the 
honesty  and  purity  of  all  men  ;  who  lift  your 
vile  voice  up  and  try  to  cast  slurs  on  the  great 
God,  who  could  crush  you,  helpless  worm,  in 
the  very  instant  of  your  blasphemies  against 
Him,  know  now  and  forej/er;  that,  spite  of  your 
concealment,  this  very  language  is  the  banner 
you  fling  out  to  the  winds,  which  bears  plainly 
stamped  upon  it  the  confession  of  your  im- 
purityT  that  all  who  run  may  read.  Repent  i 
while  there  is  time.  Go  and  sin  no  more.  Try ! 
to  realize  that  yon  are  the  one  who  has  been 
wicked ;  itmay  be  that  you  have  ruined  the 
virtue  of  some  pure  man— &here  are  such,  spite 

"1—  ~" "  "^  -         ^^^^ 

,rof  your  weak,  wicked  and  sickening  ravings  to/ 
t  the  contrary — tens  of  thousands  of  them.] 


XIX. 

"  BUT  you  believe  in  divorce,  I  suppose?" 
sneered  Mr.  Trotman,  with  the  air  of  a  man 
who  has  put  a  staggerer  of  a  question. 

Yes,  I  believe  in  divorce,  and  I  believe  in  re- 
moving a  cancer  with  a  knife. 

The  operation   may  kill  you  ;    but  as  life  is 


1 84          Get   Thee  beJiind  Me,  Satan  ! 

/valueless  when  one  has  a  cancer,  one  may  as 
/  well  risk  getting  cured  by  the  surgeon's  terrible 
knife — especially  as,  if  the  cancer  continues,  it 
will  kill  you. 

When  I  look  around  and  see  the  unhappiness 
which  exists  between  certainly  three-fourths  of 
the  married  people  I  know,  my  only  wonder  is 
— not  that  so  many  people  seek  divorces,  but 
that  so  few  do. 

"There!"  says  Mrs.  Freelove,  "my  argu- 
ment exactly.  The  whole  system  is  wrong. 
Marriage  is  an  absurd  and  cruel  tyranny  from 
which  earth  should  be  freed.  Men  and  women 
should  love  when  and  whom  .they  please.  The 
most  intimate  relations  ought  to  be  taken  on 
and  put  off  at  will." 

It  is  a  pet  taunt  with  free-love  women  that  no 
woman  who  has  been  obliged  to  submit  to  the 
cruel  legal  operation — divorce — has  the  right  to 
object  to  their  doctrines.  [  As  if  divorce  and 
free-love  had  of  necessity  anything  in  common !  ; 
Divorce  and  free-love  are  no  more  allied  than 
marriage  and  free-love  ;  for  one  need  not  to  be 
divorced  in  order  to  commit  free-love — since 
that  is  the  euphemism  now  employed.  Such 
an  imputation  is  enough  to  make  the  bones  of 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan!          185 

every  dead  divorced  woman  turn  in  the  grave — 
beginning  with  the  chaste  and  lovely  Josephine 
de  Beauharnais,  divorced  wife  of  the  first 
Napoleon. 

There  is  an  American  woman,  well  known  to 
many  who  will  read  this  book,  and  honored  by 
every  good  and  true  man  and  woman  who  does 
know  her,  who  has  been  three  times  married, 
and  twice  divorced.  She  is  a  good  and  pure 
woman,  now  preaching  the  gospel  —  a  noble 
woman,  whom  any  household  might  be  glad  to 
welcome  under  its  rooftree — a  most  unfortunate 
woman,  whose  sorrowful  history  might  almost 
wring  tears  from  a  heart  of  stone.  Mrs.  Free- 
love  and  her  clan  profess  to  feel  mighty  fine  in- 
dignation at  the  fact  that  this  woman  should 
repudiate  them,  scoff  at  their  doctrines,  pro- 
nounce their  teachings  wicked  and  pernicious. 
/  But  the  plain  truth  is  that  this  woman — spite  of  \ 
her  three  marriages — is  purer  than  any  virgin 
who  should  only  entertain  free-love  doctrines,  / 
,  believe  them,  intend  to  follow  them. 

You  ask  perhaps  how  it  is  that  a  good  woman 
should  have  thrown  herself  into  three  marriages ; 
this  is  not  even  pathetic,  it  is  almost  ludicrous. 

I  knew  this  woman  when  I  was  a  child.     She 


1 86          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan! 

was  a  great  beauty,  and  a  sweet  poet.  She 
was  married  at  sixteen  to  a  pork-packer,  who, 
report  said,  treated  her  worse  than  one  of  his  own 
hogs.  Set  free  from  him,  she  again  married, 
after  a  time.  She  was  young,  beautiful  and,  she 
hungered  for  affection.  A  man  who  I  am  told 
was  as  beautiful  and  as  gifted  as  herself  won 
her  love  ;  but  he  was — I  think  there  can  be 
little  doubt — Don  Juan  redivivus.  Insulted, 
betrayed,  polluted  by  his  atmosphere  of  de- 
bauch, she  again  appealed  to  the  law  to  loose 
this  tie.  She  was  heart-broken.  Years  passed  ; 
and  then  a  blessed,  gray-haired  man,  twenty 
years  her  senior,  gave  her  his  name,  his  protect- 
ing care,  the  blessing  of  his  love.  You  should 
hear  this  story  from  her  own  lips  to  feel  its  full 
significance.  I  think  the  severest  moralist 
among  you  would  not  hesitate  to  'say,  "  Poor 
woman,  I  do  not  blame  you." 

I  am  not  well  enough  acquainted  with  its 
details  to  feel  warranted  in  attempting  to  tell 
her  story,  or  to  illustrate  how  it  may  have  been 
with  her,  in  the  two  painful,  mistaken  alliances 
she  was  led  to  make,  before  she  married  the 
good  man  who  blessed  her  life,  and  whom  she 
mourns  henceforth  in  perpetual  widowhood. 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          1 87 

I  have  seen  so  much  shame  and  so  much 
misery  arise  out  of  those  love-matches  which 
are  made  in  youth's  heat,  when,  the  judgment 
immature,  the  heart  untried,  life  all  untasted, 
two  mad  creatures  rush  into  each  other's  arms, 
like  two  chemicals  in  a  laboratory  !  When  the 
explosion  is  over,  the  smoke  subsides,  and  the 
heart's  fury  calms,  then  the  two  mad  creatures 
look  into  each  other's  faces  and  see  what  fools 
they  have  been.  "  And  to  think  that  I  am 
joined  to  this  man  for  life ! "  exclaims  the 
woman.  "  A  pretty  millstone  I've  tied  around 
my  neck  ! "  says  the  husband.  And  thence- 
forth they  are  obliged  to  trudge  along  through  / 
life  together,  through  joy  and  sorrow,  weal  and/ 

woe,   in  relations  of  closest  intimacy  till  death: 

f 
shall  part  them. 

Now  in  regard  to  a  match  of  this  sort,  I  hope 
'I  shall  not  be  considered  unchristianlike  if  I 
respectfully  decline  to  believe  it  was  made  in 
heaven.  I  know  of  several  just  such,  that  were 
made  in  a  boarding-house  where  I  lived,  and 
very  unhappy  they  proved. 

One — ah  me,  how  well  I  remember-  it !  was  , 
of  a  young  girl,  extremely  guileless  and  un-  \ 
worldly,  who,  when  less  than  seventeen  years 


1 88  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan/ 

old,  "  fell  in  love  "  with  a  man  who  dropped  in 
one  day  to  board  where  she  did.  It  was  at  a 
small  and  uncomfortable  hotel  on  Broadway, 
which  everybody  in  it  hated,  but  endured 
ecause  it  was  cheap.  Of  course  he  fell  in  love 
with  her  first — wooed  her  with  that  delightful 
abandon  which  prevails  in  boarding-houses  and 
cheap  hotels,  and  finally  gained  her  heart — for 
the  time,  that  is.  He  represented  himself  as  a 
wealthy  Southerner,  at  present  rather  cramped 
for  money  from  some  cause  or  other,  but  a 
wealthy  man  for  all  that,  who  would  take  care 
of  her  from  that  time  forth,  provide  her  with 
every  comfort,  and  of  course  relieve  her  from 
all  labor.  The  young  girl  was  earning  fifteen 
dollars  a  week.  She  gave  up  her  situation,  and 
married  Jiim. 

Her  family  did  not  attempt  to  look  into  the 

^f "^ 

yoiinp-  man's  rh-arqrter  and  antecedents^^  In  the 

first  place  they  knew  nobody  who  knew  him  ; 
in  the  second  place,  such  were  his  insinuating 
Ways,  that  they  bestowed  their  fullest  confidence 
in  him,  and  would  not  have  believed  anything 
against  him  if  they  had  heard  it.  So  this  couple 
were  made  one  flesh — at  least  a'minister  said  so, 
and  stated  in  a  hurried  voice  (he  had  an  invita- 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          189 

tion  up  town  and  was  in  a  hurry),  that  no  man 
should  put  asunder  what  God  had  joined  to- 
gether. 

And  if  God  had  really  joined  them  together, 
it  would  have  been  a  heinous  crime  for  any  man 
to  put  them  asunder  ;  but,  knowing  the  circum- 
stances of  the  case  thoroughly  as  I  do,  I  refuse 
f  to  believe  that  God  had  anything  to  do  with 
/    such  a  hasty,  ill-advised,  ill-assorted,  and  .alto-/ 
gether  wretched  marriage. 

The  'wealthy  Southerner  was  proved  to  be 
neither  wealthy,  nor  a  Southerner,  n.or  a  gentle- 
man ;  but  a  miserable  gambler,  without  an 
honest  dollar  in  his  pocket,  nor  an  honest  idea 
in  his  head,  nor  an  honest  sentiment  in  his  heart. 
You  may  fancy  the  girl's  horror  on  awakening 
to  these  facts,  as  well  as  to  the  knowledge  that 
her  husband's  love  for  her  was  a  species  of  hot- 
blooded  fever  which  died  out  completely  after 
three  months  of  matrimony.  But  the  saddest 
discovery  of  all  was  the  discovery  of  her  own 
feelings  concerning  the  man  to  whom  she  was 
joined  for  life.  The  veil  dropped  from  her  eyes, 
and  showed  her  the  appalling  truth — that  she  j 
hated  her  husband. 

Will  anybody  say  this   match  was  made  in 


190          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan^f 

heaven  ?  Were  these  people  really  joined  by 
God  ?  I  think  it  blasphemy  to  say  so. 

If  it  be  that  Satan  has  anything  to  do  with 
making  disjointed  marriages — as  he  no  doubt 
has  with  every  kind  of  sin — I  should  say  he  was 
the  prime-mover  in  joining  these  people. 

Ten  thousand  such  marriages  take  place  every 
year.  In  their  train  they  bring  untold  agonies, 
remorse,  chafing  under  the  galling  yoke  and  not 
unfrequently  insanity,  infamy  and  violent  death. 

What  then  ?  Is  the  fault  with  marriage  ? 
Shall  we  then  condemn  marriage  ? 

Why,  you  poor,  trivial  creature,  you^might 
as  well  mfer  that  it  is  the  fault  of  religion  that  a 
hypocrite  derives  no  good  from  his  religious 
professions.  You  might  as  well  condemn  truth 
because  youfhaving  heard  that  truth  lay  at  the 

bottom  of  a  well)  had  jumped  into  a  well  in 

* — T-«_-  "* " 

search  of  it,  and  drowned  yourself. 

When  marriage  fails  to  be  a  blessing  to  us, 
the  fault  lies  primarily  in  ojirselves.  We  are 
the  sufferers  from  our  own  folly,  our  own  vanity, 
our  own  weakness  or  wickedness.  ^The  cancer 
has  grown  in  our  breasts,  because  we  ourselves 
planted  it  there.  J 

When    Mrs.   Freelove    assails    marriage,   she 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          191 

assails  an  institution  as  essential  to  our  civi- 
lization as  law  itself.  If  you  can  safely 
abolish  all  law,  then  you  can  abolish  marriage. 

— Ah,  but  this  is  not  all— no,  no  !  When  I 
contemplate  the  idea  of  your  abolishing  the 
marriage  of  people  who  love  —  and  I  know 
many  such — even  to  repealing  the  law  which 
makes  it  a  virtue  in  both  husband  and  wife  to 
obey  the  promptings  of  their  natures— I  feel 
that  you  would  rob  them  of  something  I 
and  they  cannot  name,  but  for  which  there  is 
no  recompense  !  Why,  rash  iconoclast,  people 
who  love  and  are  married  kiss  with  joy  the 
gyve  which  binds  them  together  ! 
f  There  is  no  resisting  Love,  when  Heaven  ) 
Smiles  upon  the  lovers.  Not  all  the  votes  that 
were  ever  cast,  from  Washington's  day  down 
to  Tweed's, — and  counting  the  repeating  done, 
this  is  a  considerable  number, — will  ever  change 
this  fact.  Free-love  reformers  might  as  well 
try  to  legislate  child-bearing  to  the  other  sex  as  to 
hope  to  change  a  sentiment  as  immutable  as  death. 

My  only  conception  of  God  is — not  the  Great 
Jehovah  who  rules  the  spheres,  and  holds  the 
waters  in  the  hollow  of  his  hand — but  a  good 
Father  who  will  love  me,  and  rest  me. 


192  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

A  person  who   knew  Wilberforce  once  told 
me  that  the  only  way  he  could  picture  to  him- 
self Christ  was    to    say  to    himself,    "Jesus    is 
Wilberforce  millions  of  times  improved.     And 
He  will  love  me^and  comfort  me  as  Wilberforce 
did — but  immeasurably  more." 
/  In  fact,  there  is  nothing  on  earth  worth  living 
/  for  but  love  ;   nothing  so  beautiful,  nothing  so 
rare.     Give  it  as  freely  as  you  can — give  it  to 
1     mother,  father,  sister,  brother,  child,  friend — but 
\  (you  can  give  it  but  once  to  a  husbands 


XX. 

u  IN  some  way,  somehow,  somewhere,  a  wo- 
man must  be  her  husband's  partner — or  take  the 
consequence  :  contempt!}  To  what  degree,  and 
in  what  kind,  depends  on  many  circumstances. 

For  example,  a  man  may  be  so  splendidly 
framed  by  his  Maker,  that  he  is  capable  of 
being  just.  There  ajg.  such  men  in  thejvprld  ; 
but  they  are  rare.  Such  a  man  may  perceive 
that  his  wife,  while  lacking  in  certain  qualities 
wherein  he  is  strong,  equalizes  her  lack  therein 
by  the  possession  of  other  qualities  wherein  he 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          193 

is  weak.  This,  to  begin  with,  opens  the  win- 
dow which  ventilates  a  home  with  pure  air,  in 
which  contempt  cannot  live. 

Happy  is  the  lot  of  the  wife  whose  marriage) 
^•bond  was  wrought  in  heaven  !  For  the  condi- 
tion of  all  such,  God  be  praised  !  They  have 
no  need  of  the  benefits  which  attach  to  ability 
to  care  for  one's  self,  until — ah,  yes  !  until  the 
good  husband  dies,  or  changes  from  goodness 
into  its  reverse — as  it  is  in  the  nature  of  poor 
humanity  to  do — until  the  yoke  presses  hard  on 
the  feeble  neck,  and  the  woman  realizes  that 
bitter  is  the  lot  of  woman.  When  she  lays  h 
husband  in  the  grave — either  in  the  actual  grave- 
yard mould  of  physical  death,  or  the  tomb^jof 
dead  virtue,  dead  faithfulness,  dead  honor,  the 
weeds  of  drunkenness,  debauchery,  and  shame 
rioting  over  him — then,  when  the  question  arises 
"  How  to  earn  my  own  and  my  children's  daily 
bread,"  she  learns  the  misfortune  of  being 
a  dependent  woman. 

If  the  fault  were  simply  in  woman  as  woman, 
instead  of  in  the  position  of  woman,  there  would 
be  less  to  say.  But,  I  indignantly  deny  that 
woman's  weakness  is  in  her  sex.  The  refutation 

of  this  libel  is  found  in  ten  thousand  instances, 
9 


194          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Safan  ! 

where  woman  has  risen  above  her  common 
position  of  dependence,  and  has  proved  herself 

equal  to  such  work  as  man  is  equal  to. 

/""  "~ 

/  Blessed  be  the  woman  who  is  wedded  to  man- 
hood, honor,  intelligence,  virtue,  justice  !  But, 
shame  upon  the  woman  who  is  thus  blest,  if  she, 
in  a  selfishness  which  is  beyond  all  other  selfish- 
ness on  earth,  shall  be  false  to  the  spirit  of 
grand  and  beneficent  principle  !  So  one  might 
cry,  "  I  have  no  need  of  charity — away  with 
charity  !  charity  is  insolence  to  me ! "  But/ 

others  may  need  it. 
~ 
Many  women,  from  sheer  mental  laziness,  are 

opposed  to  any  improvement  in  the  condition 
of  their  sex.  They  look  over  the  newspapers, 
and,  being  unable  to  comprehend  clearly  the 
drift  of  certain  great  questions,  because  they 
have  never  taken  the  pains  to  study  them,  they 
think  political  and  social  science  an  occult 
mystery,  which  it  would  be  hopeless  in  them  to 
ever  dream  of  penetrating.  So  they  determine 
not  to  expose  their  own  ignorance,  but  to  con- 
ceal it  under  a  mean  cry  of—"  Woman's  sphere  ' 
is  the  kitchen  !  Any  woman  is  unsexed  who 
meddles  with  higher  questions  than  soup  and 
\stuffing." 


Get   TJiee  behind  Me,  Satan!          195 

Sometimes  they  affect  a  sweet  simplicity,  and 
simper  something  like  this  : 

"  Oh,  those  coarse  creatures  who  have 
brains  in  their  heads !  I've  not  got  any 
brains  in  my  head,  so  I'm  not  coarse.  I'm  a 
sweet  and  simple  little  idiot  that  don't  know 
whether  politics  is  something  to-  drink  or  a  sort 
of  garment.  I  hear  so  much  about  turn-coats, 
you  know.  He  !  he  !  I  don't  know  anything. 
Don't  you  admire  me,  sir  ?  " 

And  this  woman  finds  men  who  pat  her  on 
the  head,  as  they  would  any  other  frisky  little 
poppy,  male  or  female,  quadruped  or  biped. 

No  doubt  the  Turkish  seraglio  slave-woman 
thinks  her  degraded  position  the  proper  sphere  for . 
her  sex,  and  would  hoot  at  any  one  who  proposed 
a  change  in  that  position.      No  doubt  she  would 
declare  a  woman  "  unsexed"  who  should  dare  to 
violate  the  old  established  routine  of  life  there,  and 
pronounce  the  bowstring  the  proper  reward  for 
her  immodest  conduct  in  seeking  a  larger  liberty. 

And  apropos  of  this,  an  anecdote  : 

When  I  was  residing  in  Paris,  a  dressmaker, 
who  used  to  work  for  me,  received  one  day  a 
large  order  for  dresses  for  some  oriental  women 
kept  in  a  seraglio  in  Algiers.  The  dress — of 


196           Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  I 

which  patterns  were  sent  her — consisted  of  a 
loose  gored  sack,  open  in  front,  falling  to  the 
knee,  and  flowing  trousers  underneath  this, 
gathered  at  the  ankle.  Everything  was  to  be 
made  of  the  most  expensive  material  —  silk, 
satin,  gauze,  gossamer — and  it  was  stipulated 
that  the  lining*  of  both  trousers  and  sack  was 
to  be  as  rich,  costly,  and  perfectly  finished  off 
as  the  outside. 

The  job  was  a  profitable  one,  and  to  be  sure 
of  pleasing  her  employers  and  thus  securing 
further  custom  from  them,  the  dressmaker  sent 
her  eldest  daughter  (a  young  married  woman) 
to  Algiers,  to  deliver  the  articles.  When  she 
returned,  Marie  told  me  that  the  Algerian 
women  received  their  things  like  babies  — 
clapping  their  hands  and  dancing  with  joy  over 
them.  But  they  presently  turned  their  atten- 
tion to  the  woman  who  brought  them  ;  and 
when  they  found  she  had  walked  through  the 
streets  without  a  veil,  such  as  they  wore  around 
their  heads,  leaving  nothing  but  their  eyes 
visible,  they  called  her  all  sorts  of  vile  names, 
charged  her  with  being  lost  to  virtue,  slapped 
her  face,  and  turned  her  out  of  their  presence. 

It  is  but  a  narrow  intelligence  which  is  unable 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          197 

to  separate  the  aims  of  honor-loving  and 
virtue-cherishing  women  from  those  of  free-love 
advocates,  merely  because  they  both  believe  in 
changes  in  woman's  status.  God  knows,  I 
wage  no  war  upon  the  comfortable  lot  she 
occupies,  whose  husband's  love  is  all  to  her, 
and  enough  for  all  her  wants.  Rest  contented 
in  your  pleasant  nest,  dear !  But  don't  shake 
your  pretty  little  head  disapprovingly  at  women 
whose  objects  in  life  are  beneficent  for  your 
sex,  however  little  you  may  think  they  are  for 
you.  Your  time  of  need  may  come,  it  is  true. 
I  hope  it  may  not.  But  if  it  should,  I  hope  also 
that  you  may  not  find  yourself  unable  to  earn 
your  livelihood. 

There  are  undoubtedly  men  in  the  world  who 
do  not  want  their  wives  to  work.  And  if,  in 
the  great  scheme  of  existence,  there  were  one 
such  man  to  marry  every  woman,  there  would 
be  less  occasion  for  the  discussion  of  woman's 
needs.  Yet  if  there  be  one  woman  in  this 
world,  who  hath  no  such  husband  to  save 
her  from  the  necessity  of  toil,  that  one  woman's 
case  is  to  be  provided  for  in  some  other  way. 

And  what  is  the  fact? 

Why  the  fact  is  that  there  are  thousands  and 


, 


198  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

thousands  of  such  women.  The  avenues  of 
labor  are  thronged  with  such  women,  struggling 
with  inefficient  powers  against  the  hard  fate  of 
poverty,  which  is  always  crowding  them  into 
temptation's  paths;  and  the  grand  army  of  sin\ 
and  shame  is  constantly  recruited  from  their 
ranks 


XXL 

AND  motherhood !  What  of  this  question  of 
child-bearing,  and  child-tending,  which  comes 
with  marriage  ? 

If  we  were  living  in  a  state  of  ideal  civiliza- 
tion, I  should  not  have  to  put  on  record  the 
hard  truths  which  belong  to  this  subject.  I 
should  be  able  to  speak  of  motherhood  sweetly, 
poetically,  as  the  holy  and  blessed  thing  it  is, 
and  draw  you  such  fair  pictures  of  the  ideal 
mother  and  child  as  should  make  your  heart 
glad  with  admiration.  But  the  truth  is, 
motherhood  is  in  this  day  and  country  practi- 
cally received  as  a  doubtful  blessing  by  most 
women.  Why? 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          199 

"  It  isn't  the  first  of  it  I  care  so  much  about," 
said  an  expectant  mother  to  me  recently,  "  but 
it  is  the  long  years — three,  four,  or  five — dur- 
ing which  I  must  be  at  the  mercy  of  the 
child." 

It  is  because  there  is  so  much  slavery  put  on 
the  mother  which  need  not  be  put  there,  that  so 
many  women  look  forward  with  something  very 
like  dread  to  the  prospect  of  motherhood. 

I  have  before  printed  my  views  on  the  absur- 
dity of  insisting  that  a  strong,  active-brained, 
labor-competent  woman,  should  be  compelled 
by  the  force  of  custom  to  sit  for  hours  holding 
a  baby  on  her  knees  to  the  exclusion  of  every 
other  employment. 

I  have  been  thought  hard  in  this  matter — 
lacking  in  that  innate  adoration  of  babyhood 
which  should  inspire  the  soul  of  every  true 
woman. 

But  those  who  think  I  can  see  no  charms  in 
babyhood,  know  not  my  inmost  heart.  I  sup- 
pose I  am  as  instinctively  an  idolater  in  this 
sphere  as  most  women  are. 

But  because  I  love  Baby,  I  would  serve  him.    \ 
I  I  see  that  Baby  is  not  so  flourishing  an  institu- 
tion in  these  days,  and  in  this  country,   as  he 


2OO          Get   Thee  beJiind  Me,  Satan  ! 

was  in  other  days,  and  is  in  some  other  countries. 
And  the  reason  may  be  perceived  by  the  naked 
eye,  by  any  intelligent  person  who  will  look  at 
it  without  green  goggles  of  prejudice  on.  In 
those  other  countries  Baby  is  not  the  incubus 
upon  woman's  energies  that  he  is  in  this  country. 
A  money-earning  European  mother  would 
never  think  of  giving  up  her  employment  to  sit 
and  hold  her  baby.  I  know  that  there  have 
been  many  abuses  relating  to  paid  baby-tending 
in  Europe  ;  but  if  we  should  adopt  anything 
'like  their  system,  we  could  enact  such  laws  as 
European  mistakes  have  taught  us  to  be  neces- 
,sary.  But  these  abuses  can  only  exist  when 
the  mother  is  so  unfortunate  as  to  be  obliged  to 
put  her  child  out  in  the  country — away  from 
her — to  nurse,  along  with  a  number  of  other 
babies  who  are  all  expected  to  eke  out  a  scanty 
sustenance  from  the  bosom  of  a  common  nurse- 
mother.  I  am  speaking  now  on  behalf  of  dress- 
makers, milliners,  copyists,  and  a  large  number 
of  women  engaged  in  employment  which  they 
do  at  home,  but  which  custom  exacts  they  shall 
immediately  relinquish  when  baby  comes  — 
leaving  the  getting  of  very  necessary  income  to 
devote  their  whole  time  to  holding  baby  on 


Get  Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !         201 

their  knees,  or  getting  down  on  the  floor  and 
playing  with  him. 

There  are  so  many  poor  women  and  girls  in 
this  world — so  many  classes  to  whom  a  dollar  is 
a  large  sum — that  I  hold  it  to  be  the  duty  of 
every  woman  who  can  do  service  in  a  high  path 
of  labor,  to  hire  some  poorer  woman  to  per- 
form the  necessary  details  of  a  lower  one.     AA 
woman  who  is  capable  of  earning  five  dollars  j 
>  by  her  work  for  half  an  hour,  is  a  dunce  if  she/ 
I   devotes  that  half-hour  to  saving  fifty  cents.     It 

\  i 

is  all  wrong,  this  sort  of  economy.  I  myself 
have  kept  the  printer  waiting  while  I  was  pre- 
paring clothes  for  the  wash  ;  I  have  spent  two 
whole  days  turning  and  twisting  an  old  dress, 
when  I  might  have  made  enough-to  buy  me  a 
new  one  and  pay  for  the  making  of  it  by 
writing  a  newspaper  article.  These  were  the 
mistakes  which  opened  my  eyes  and  made  me 
see  the  folly  which  I  would  be  glad  to  keep 
other  women  from  running  into.  My  preparing 
of  the  clothes  for  the  wash  was  not  one  whit 
better,  and  my  re-making  of  the  old  dress  was! 
not  so  good,  as  would  have  been  that  of  some 
woman  who  was  incapable  of  writing  the  maga- 
zine article,  and  to  whom  but  a  portion  of  the 
a* 


2O2           Get  Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

money  I  earned  by  the  other  and  more  con- 
genial work  would  have  been  a  God-send. 

Let  the  husband  of  the  woman  who  is  ex- 
pecting to  be  a  mother  say  to  her,  "  Now  dear, 
come  what  may,  you  shall  have  a  nurse-girl  to 
help  you  take  care  of  that  baby.  Under  your 
eye  a  girl  a  dozen  years  old,  whose  services 
may  be  had  for  a  trifle,  will  help  amazingly  to 
relieve  you  of  the  ceaseless  fatigue  and  care." 

Such  a  girl  can,  at  the  beginning,  rock  a 
cradle  and  run  certain  errands  which  a  baby 
always  brings  ;  and  as  baby  grows  older  the 
nurse-girl  can  amuse  him  during  the  long 
hours  ;  she  can  play  on  the  floor  with  him,  set 
i  up  and  knock  down  continuous  bricks  for  him, 
and  play  with  him  just  as  skilfully  as  you  can. 

When  baby  is  sick  or  hungry,  then  mother 
is  wanted,  and  nobody  can  take  her  place  ;  but 
when  the  little  stomach  is  full  to  repletion, 
when  no  pin  obtrudes  itself  and  aches  are  for- 
gotten, then  mother  may  well  busy  her  adult 
hands  and  brain  with  needful,  thoughtful  work, 
and  leave  a  nurse  to  care  for  baby — especially 
if  she  herself  is  in  the  same  room. 

In  looking  at  Europe  through  the  goggles  of 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          203 

prejudice,  American  women  have  seen  a  great 
many  ugly  things  which  are  not  visible  to  the 
naked  eye. 

They  have  seen  that  European  mothers  are 
heartless,  frivolous,  wicked — that  they  have  no 
serious  conception  of  the  importance  of  mother- 
hood, the  duties  of  child-rearing,  the  blessed 
privilege  of  devoting  one's  self  entirely  to  Baby. 

Now    let    us    fly— only    for    a   paragraph    o 
two — to  France.     Turning  back  a  few  pages  of 
life's  book   you   may  see   her  who   now  writes 
these  lines  to  you,  standing  at  the  bedside  of  a 
young  French  wife.     This  lady,  during  three-A 
quarters  of  a  year  has  held  herself  as  a  speciall 
agent   of  God,  the    object   of  His    more   than\< 
common  care,  the  medium  through  which  His  I 
greatest  marvel  is  to  be  performed.     Also,  she 
has  held  that  medium  sacred.     She  has  lived 
with  special   regard  to  the   life  which  is  to  be. 
Her   food    has   been   chosen    judiciously ;    her 
exercise   has   been    out   in   the   air.      She   hasK 
bathed  tri-weekly  in  luke-warm  water,  lying  in  / 
the   healthfully   relaxing   bath  a   half  an   hour  ^ 
each  time.     She  has  avoided  all   excitements, 
all   anger,    all   ill-temper,   all   feverish   balls   o 
parties.      But    tranquil   amusement    has    been 


2O4          Get   Thee  bcJdnd  Me,  Satan  ! 

/constant;   she  must   be  diverted.     "It  is   im- 

/  poftant,  because  the  child's  mind  is  forming  at 

J     the  same  time  as  its  body,"  says  her  husband. 

"We  desire  our  child  to  have  a  cheerful  tem- 

\  perament." 

******** 

"  It  is  finished  !  It  is  happily  terminated  !  " 
cries  out  the  cheery,  valuable  midwife.  "  It's 
not  more  difficult  than  that.  Aliens  !  courage, 
little  mama !  Bon  jour,  mademoiselle !  How 
dost  thou  find  thyself?  There's  thy  little 
mama  lying  on  that  bed.  How  dost  thou  find 
her — to  thy  liking  ?  Come,  little  mother,  it  is 
an  admirable  little  daughter  that  the  good  God 
has  sent  us.  God  be  praised  !  " 

Four  days  afterward  the  little  mother  tells  me 
she  feels  as  if  she'd  like  to  scrub  the  floor. 
Happily,  she  is  not  allowed.  Old  traditions 
prevail  even  with  the  most  sensible  people. 
Nine  days  must  pass  before  she  leaves  her 
room  ;  but  she  is  sitting  up  and  moving  about 
before  that. 

And  the  little  daughter  ? — the  beloved  angel 
of  the  good  God  ? 

Ah,  she  if  you  please  is  already  forming  her 
opinion  of  her  future  place  of  residence.  She 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !         205 

is  promenading  up  and  down  the  Champs  Ely- 
s£es,  or  around  the  church  of  the  Madeleine,  or 
sauntering  the  length  of  the  Boulevards,  when 
she  is  three  days  old. 

On  a  pillow.     In  the  arms  of  a  nurse.    To  be\ . 

1^^^^ 

sure.     But  think  of  it !     Three   days  old,  and  \ 
cold  weather  !  jf 

And  every  day,  rain  or  shine,  cold  or  warm,, 

\ 
this  admirable  little  daughter  disports  herself  in  \ 

the  air  almost  the  whole  day  long.  From  her 
birth  she  is  outdoors.  As  she  grows  older  she 
runs,  she  jumps,  she  romps,  she  enjoys  life  to 
the  full.  And  spite  of  this  early  training  I 
never  heard  that  the  manners  of  a  Frenchwoman 
were  lacking  in  elegance  or  even  femininity. 

"These  are  rich  people's  children.  How  do 
the  poor  do?" 

They  manage  otherwise— but  they  manage. 
That  any  child — of  parents  no  matter  how  poor 
— should  remain  cooped  up  within  doors  for 
even  one  whole  day  would  seem  to  the  French 
mind,  something  very  like  a  catastrophe. 

And  you  know  how  it  is  with  the  English. 
If  you  do  not,  wait  until  you  go  to  the  beautiful 
isle  by  the  sea.  There  shall  you  see  in  the 
public  parks  little  girls  and  boys  mounted  on 


2d6          Get  Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

Shetland  ponies  about  the  size  of  Newfound- 
land dogs,  galloping  from  one  end  of  Rotten 
Row  to  the  other,  pictures  of  health,  beauty 
and  innocence.  There  shall  you  see  young 
ladies  rowing,  swimming,  following  the  hounds 
mounted  on  mettlesome  chargers,  leaping  five- 
barred  gates  and  taking  ten-mile  walks  as  a 
daily  constitutional.  And  the  red  cheeks,  and 
the  hard,  healthy  flesh  !  How  I  long  for  these 
for  my  countrywomen,  North  and  South,  East 
and  West  !  Can  we  not  have  them  ?  What's 
to  prevent  ? 

"  The  red  cheeks  are  an  affair  of  climate." 
It  may  be  so  ;  but  the  healthy  body  is  not. 
That  is  an  affair  of  regular  habits,  of  pure  air, 
of  vigorous  out-dooi  exercise.     We  can  have 
all  these.  - 

/  Let  us  have  them.  Women  in  the  rural  dis- 
tricts, get,  each  of  you,  a  pair  of  strong  boots 
and  make  it  a  duty  like  any  other  to  walk  at 
^  least  two  or  three  miles  every  day  !  Women  of 
the  city,  who  can  walk  in  any  weather  over 
miles  and  miles  of  well-paved  streets,  let  not 
the  fear  of  being  seen  in  an  old  dress  keep  you 
within,  any  day  in  the  year.  It  is  so  easy  to 
explain  it  to  any  one  of  whose  opinion  you 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          207 

stand  in  awe.     "  I  came  out,  bad  as  the  weather  \ 
is,  for  my  constitutional."      And  not  one  but    ] 
will   say    "  Sensible   woman,    to   care    for   her  / 
health." 

And  let  these  be  laws  which  you  yourself, 
good  mother,  make  for  your  girl  children  from, 
their  earliest  youth.  Open  their  little  minds  to 
the  sweet  knowledge  that  feet  were  made  to 
scamper  with,  arms  were  made  to  swing  by, 
mouths  were  made  to  breathe  fresh  air  through, 
nostrils  to  snuff  it  up  with,  ears  are  organs  with 
which  to  listen  to  song-birds,  eyes  are  organs 
with  which  to  gaze  upon  the  glory  of  God's 
blue  heaven,  unobstructed  by  a  window-pane. 


XXII. 

DID  you  ever  know  an  expectant  mother  who 
wanted  a  girl  ?  No,  I'll  answer  for  it.  Hus- 
band  "  wants  a  boy  "  and  so  does  she. 

Nevertheless,  in  this  matter  as  in  all  others, 
God  disposes  ;  and  the  nurse  cries  from  behind 
her  cap-frill  "  Oh,  sir,  you've  got  such  a  dear 
little  daughter  !  " 

A  daughter !  Why.  he  and  wife  had  counted  on 


208  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

a  son  ;  had  even  settled  what  they  should  name 
him  ;  nay,  they  had  gone  further — they  had 
called  him  William  after  his  rich  uncle,  who  was 
so  delighted  that  he  forthwith  died  and  left  the 
child  all  his  money.  But  a  daughter  ! — oh  !  the 
golden  dream  vanishes  as  abruptly  as  did  that 
of  the  farmer's  daughter  who  had  reckoned  up 
even  to  a  husband  out  of  the  basket  of  eggs 
she  was  carrying  on  her  head,  and  broke  them 
all  as  she  curtseying  tossed  her  silly  noddle  to 
decline  a  mythical  rival. 

A  daughter.!  why  they  made  sure  it  would  be 
a  son  !  This  aversion  to  a  feminine  baby  would 
indicate  that  we  resemble  the  Chinese  more 
closely  than  we  think. 

However,  missie  is  born.  What  are  you  go- 
ing to  do  about  it  ?  You  can't  send  her  back 
where  she  came  from.  One  reason  is. that  you 
don't  know  where  she  came  from.  At  any  rate, 
she  is  here.  Trim  her  with  laces,  swathe  her 
in  fine  linen.  She  is  only  a  little  more  helpless^ 
now  than  she  will  be  as  a  woman, 

In  the  cradle  there  is  no  distinction  of  sex. 
Tiny  man  will  amuse  himself  with  a  string  of 
empty  spools  or  an  india-rubber  doll  as  well  as 
missie  ;  and  spite  of  her  pride  in  his  sex  mamma 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          209 

will  scarcely  give  her  three-months-old  boy  gun, 
pistol,  or  drum  as  he  lies  squirming  in  his  crib. 
For  a  period  at  least  the  sexes  are  equal ;  there 
is  no  disadvantage  in  being  a  girl. 

But  speed  me  a  year ;  and  I  will  show  you 
already  unmistakable  signs  of  the  manship  of 
master.  His  hair  is  parted  to  one  side.  He's 
a  boy.  He's  papa's  MAN  ;  he's  mamma's  BOY  ! 
he's  lord  of  all  he  surveys. 

So  anxious  are  his  parents  that  the  world 
shall  know  that  this  bit  of  humanity  is  not  that 
inferior  thing,  a  girl,  but  that  he  has  undoubted 
right  to  belong  to  the  powerful  tribe  of  mascu- 
lines, that,  before  he  can  do  much  more  than 
stagger  (the  full  perfection  of  this  he  acquires 
later  in  life),  you  shall  hear  the  mother  telling  of 
her  plans  for  putting  him  in  trousers.  "  He's 
such  a  boy,"  "  he's  a  regular  boy,  you  know  ;  " 
and  a  regular  boy  he  remains  to  the  proud 
mother's  heart  until  the  time  comes  when  that 
heart  is  torn  with  the  knowledge  that  he  is  an 
irregular  one. 

In  England  an  arbitrary  decree  of  baby  caps 
says  to  the  world,  "He  is  the  man!"  for  a 
rosetted  cap  means  boy  baby,  and  a  rosetteless 
cap  turns  up  its  contemptuous  frills  at  the  girl. 


2io          Get   Thee  beJiind  Me,  Satan! 

Do  I  accuse  mothers  of  lack  of  love  for  their 
"girl-children  ?  God  forbid.  And  forbid  it  also 
the  gentle  remembrance  of  my  own  dear  mother 
who  tenderly  reared  and  loved  six  daughters  ! 

But  my  accusation  is  against  the  foolish 
distinctions  made,  in  a  thousand  seemingly  un- 
important ways,  between  these  two  creatures 
whom  God  made  with  equal  care,  equal  love  ; 
to  whom  together  he  gave  the  world  ;  to  whom 
\  together  he  has  promised  life  everlasting. 

"Why  what  can  I  do?"  says  a  young 
mother.  "  I  don't  make  the  difference  between 
my  children.  My  boy  is  a  real  boy.  He  says 
he  wouldn't  be  a  girl  for  anything." 

Who  taught  him  to  say  such  an  absurd  and 
insolent  thing  ?  who  encouraged  him  thus  to 
insult  his  mother  ? 

Generally  his  mother — but  particularly  his 
father. 

It  is  such  good  fun  to  cast  slurs  on  the  sex. 
'  Is  a  boy  of  a  quiet  and  retiring  turn  of  mind  ? 
Oh,  shame  him  out  of  that — that's  so  like  a  girl ! 
Is  he  timid  ?  Then  be  sure  you  avoid  condemn- 
ing timidity  for  itself,  but  only  because  it  is  a 
distinguishing  quality  of  a  girl.  Is  he  a  cry- 
baby ?  Then  never  trouble  yourself  to  explain 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan!          211 

that  all  cry-babies  are  nuisances,  but  say  to  him, 
with  disdainful  lip  and  curling  nostril,  "  Eh,  a  cry- 
baby !  Ain't  you  ashamed  !  Just  like  a  girl !  " 
And  father,  mother  and  child  give  in  chorus  one 
long  sneer  of  contempt. 

Nor  does  it  in  the  least  matter  that  your  little 
girl  sitting  there  shall  hear  all  this. 

Thus  she  early  learns  that  mean  and  con-^ 
temptible  qualities  are  her  birthvvrong.  Nor  is 
she  ever  encouraged  to  cast  them  aside  as  un-v 
worthy.  She  is  a  girl.  They  belong  to  her 
sex. 

I  have  known  boy  babies  of  whose  acquain- 
tance I  was  ashamed.  They  were  so  dastardly 
that  I  have  cut  them  in  public.  They  were 
mean,  sneaking,  snivelling,  weak  creatures  ;  yet 
by  dint  of  earnest  urging  by  loving  mothers, 
whose  constant  aim  it  was  to  hold  up  to  them 
the  high  qualities  which  manhood  required  of 
them,  these  boy  creatures  succeeded  at  last  in 
throwing  aside  many  of  the  contemptible  weak- 
nesses which  were  evidently  born  in  them  and 
ripened  into  strong,  self-reliant,  and  worthy 
men. 

If  I  were  permitted  to  make  the  laws  of  the 
nursery,  I  would  begin  with  this  : 


212  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan! 

Section  I.  In  no  boy-baby  exchange  shall 
the  stock  of  girl-babyhood  be  quoted  below 
par. 

Section  II.  Children  shall  only  be  guided 
toward  what  is  good,  pure  and  true,  not  toward 
what  is  becoming  to  their  sex.  Cowardice, 
weakness,  lack  of  fortitude  and  all  that  is  wicked 
or  weak  is  to  be  shunned  because  it  is  wicked 
and  weak,  and  not  because  it  is  girlish  or 
boyish. 


XXIII. 

I  WONDER  what  makes  baby  cry  so  ?  A 
pin  ? 

But  you  cry  pin,  pin,  and  there  is  no  pin. 
All  strings,  sensible  mother,  or  buttons,  or, 
better  still,  a  few  stitches  done  freshly  every 
morning. 

"Then  what  makes  baby  cry?  Ah,  to  be 
sure — hungry  !  " 

And  nature's  fount — or  the  apothecary's,  the 
bottle — is  thrust  in  baby's  mouth  until  she  fairly 
spits  it  out. 

Did  it  ever  strike  you  that  your  baby  is  bored 


Get  Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          213 

with  your  society  ?  that  she  has  had  enough  of 
you,  as  you  sometimes  think  you  have  had  of 
her? 

Then  it  is  time  to  vary  the  monotony  by  in- 
troducing new  elements.  Invite  one  of  your 
neighbor's  babies  in,  and  give  the  children  their 
first  sociable  by  laying  them  down  on  the  bed 
or  the  floor  together.  My  word  for  it,  present- 
ly you  will  hear  them  crow  and  chirp,  and  you 
will  see  them  clap  their  chubby  hands  together, 
and  even  make  an  effort  to  grasp  each  other's. 
The  observations  of  hundreds  of  watchful  eyes 
will  testify  to  the  truth  of  this  statement  :  that  \ 
the  very  youngest  children  often  long  for  the 
society  of  those  of  their  own  age,  and  nothing  J 
less  than  that  will  make  them  happy. 

Every  nurse  knows  that  it  is  far  easier  to  take  \ 
care  of  two  or  even  three  children  than  one. 
The  reason  is  that  a  child  alone  is  a  tyrant ;  his 
helplessness  is  his  power ;  he  rules  all  around 
him  with  a  rod  of  iron.  I  have  seen  a  woman 
with  accomplishments  enough  to  charm  a  court 
circle,  at  her  wit's  end  to  provide  amusement 
for  her  own  baby. 

But  put  another  child  along  with  this  child  ;  | 
then   baby   learns   its   first   lesson    of  duty   to 


214          Get   Thee  behind  Me,   Satan! 

society.  He  (or  she)  stands  more  in  awe  of 
that  other  baby  than  he  (or  she)  does  of  an 
entire  grown  household. 

"  Stop  making  that  noise,  Willie,"  said 
Clarisse  to  her  boy  aged  three  years  ;  "we  are 
talking." 

"  Oo  stop  talking,"  was  the  answer.  "  I  must 
make  this  noise." 

He  is  ringing  the  dinner-bell  at  nine  o'clock  in 
the  morning. 

And  by  what  method  of  reasoning  are  you 
to  convince  that  boy  that  our  talking  (about 
bonnets,  I  confess)  is  any  more  important  than 
his  bell-ringing  ?  Or  that  we  have  any  right  to 
a  monopoly  of  noises  in  the  house,  which  so  far 
as  he  knows  belongs  entirely  to  him  ?  Clarisse 
should  early  have  explained  this  important  point 
to  him.  It  would  have  been  simple  at  the  very 
beginning.  /The  trouble  is  that  a  young  child 
is  humored  so  outrageously  that  he  soon  learns 
to  look  upon  his  rights  as  paramount  to  all 
others.  No  matter  what  fine  new  toy  or  book 
is  presented  to  any  other  child  in  the  house,  if 
Baby  cries  for  it  he  must  have  it.  "  Do  give  it 
to  him,  you  selfish  girl !  Do  give  it  to  your 
little  baby  brother." 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          215 

Oh,  the  throngs  of  little  martyrs  all  over  the 
world  to  tyrant  baby  ! 

I  mind  me  of  a  household  where  a  boy  baby 
deigned  to  make  his  appearance.  He  was  the 
first-born  ;  a  little  beauty,  really,  in  other  eyes 
than  those  of  his  parents,  and  time  has  improved 
his  character  until  he  is  now  as  good  as  he  is 
good-looking.  But  you  never  would  have 
thought  such  a  change  could  possibly  come 
about ;  for  from  the  time  he  was  one  month  old 
until  he  passed  his  sixth  year,  I  think  he  was  as 
bad  a  child  as  ever  lived. 

"  I  must  be  amoosed,"  he  would  roar. 
"  Amoose  me!  "  and  he  would  jerk  your  book 
out  of  your  hand,  and  kick  it  about  the  floor. 

"  My  dear,  why  don't  you  amuse  that  child?" 
would  cry  the  husband.  "  How  any  one  can 
sit  quietly  by  reading  when  that  child  wants  to 
be  amused  is  more  than  I  can  understand  !  Do 
something  to  amuse  him  !" 

"But,  Fred,  I  am  sewing  on  my  new  dress 
now,  which  you  want  me  to  have  done  in  time 
to  wear  to  church  on  Sunday." 

"  Put  it  away.     Stay  at  home  from  church." 


216           Get   Tkce  behind  Me,  Satan! 

"I  want  to  be  amoosed  ! "  screamed  the  boy 
by  this  time,  indulging  in  a  flood  of  tears  "just 
like  a  girl." 

"Yes,  darling;  yes,  swe-e-t!"  cried  wife, 
husband  and  friend  in  chorus. 

But  how  to  accomplish  this  difficult  task  ? 
Master  was  fastidious.  No,  he  didn't  want  to 
ride  a  jack-horse  to  Banbury  Cross ;  no,  he 
wouldn't  have  the  bear  come  and  eat  him  (said 
bear  being  his  mother  down  on  all  fours,  creep- 
ing up  to  him  wagging  her  head  and  roaring 
idiotically — and  when  she  got  close,  having  him 
thrust  his  naughty  little  fist  in  her  face  for 
recompense) ;  no,  he  didn't  want  his  whip,  nor 
any  of  the  expensive  and  ingenious  toys  which 
had  been  bought,  at  any  sacrifice,  for  him  ;  no 
— ah  yes— he  would  make  a  railroad  train  ! 

A  railroad  train  consisted  of  every  chair  in 
'the  house  being  fastened  together  with  twine  ; 
and  included  the  services  of  at  least  one  adult 
to  sit  motionless  for  hours  and  cry  out  "  tchew  ! 
tchew !  " — this  passing  muster  as  the  voice  of 
the  steam-engine. 

i          But  if  visitors  came  and  even  one  of  those 
chairs  was   wanted,   what  a  yelling,  shrieking, 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          217 

altogether  hideous  scene  that  boy  would  make  ! 
It  was  not  only  annoying,  it  was  disgrace- 
ful. 

One  day  when  the  washerwoman  came  with 
her  basketful  of  clean  linen,  a  tablecloth  was 
found  to  be  torn  ;  and  the  woman  said  "  I  didn't 
do  it,  the  little  boy  must  have  done  it." 

He  couldn't  have  been  more  offended  if  she 
had  called  him  a  girl.      He   raged.     And  his 
sensible  parents  laughed  in  admiration  of  this 
sweet  exhibition  of  his  temper ;  and  consoled 
him    for  the   indignity  which  had   been  (justly 
enough,  no  doubt)  put  upon  him  by  saying,  inN 
that   mellifluous  and  elevated  language   which 
inane   parents   deem    necessary   to    use    when/ 
speaking  t£  their  children  : 

"  Did  ze  nasty  wasserwoman  say  little  boy 
tory  tablecloss  ?  Oh,  ze  nassy,  baddy  wasser- 
woman !  Little  boy  give  it  to  her  next  time 
she  turns.  Little  boy  knock  her  over  ze  head 
wissy  broomstick." 

He  needed  no  second  telling.  For  a  week 
he  kept  that  idea  in  his  mind.  When  the 
laundress  appeared  he  walked  out  deliberately 

after  the  broomstick,    and  coming    quietly  in, 
10 


218  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan! 

went  up  behind  her  and  rapped  her  over  the 
pate  such  a  blow  that  it  was  a  mercy  he  didn't 
break  it. 

Fancy  the  tableau  !  An  inoffensive  washer- 
woman —  a  good  washerwoman,  of  virtuous 
morals  and  high  clear-starching  abilities — to  be 
broomsticked  on  sight  by  your  first-born, 
whom  you  have  encouraged  to  the  deed  ! 

There  were  worse  consequences  than  the  two 
weeks'  soiled  clothes  lying  around  the  house, 
seeking  whom  they  might  be  washed  by.  The 
story  seemed  so  humorous  to  the  good  parents 
— who  "never  thought  he  would  do  such  a 
thing  !  wasn't  it  too  cunning  ?  " — that  by-and-by 
the  boy  began  to  think  that  he  had  developed  a 
special  talent  in  that  line,  and  claiming  the 
broomstick  as  his  property,  rapped  every  one 
in  the  house  with  it,  until  he  felt  encouraged  to 
try  it  on  his  father,  who,  never  expecting  this, 
with  masculine  consistency,  thrashed  him. 

What  happened  to  this  little  rogue  to  redeem 
him  ? 

A  sister. 

Yes,  that  sister  happened  and  redeemed  him. 
I  do  not  mean  romantically,  you  understand. 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan!          219 

At  five  or  six  years  old  a  boy's  romantic  nature 
is  not  largely  developed.  But  the  sister 
belonged  to  the  child-world,  like  himself,  and 
she  showed  him  that  though  grown  people  had 
no  rights  he  was  bound  to  respect,  yet  she  and 
other  children  had. 


XXIV. 

I  SAID  the  other  day  to  a  friend  who  has  a 
darling  and  be-petted  boy  of  three  years  old, 
"How  fortunate  it  is  that  that  child  does  not 
pass  at  one  step  from  this  period  of  being 
humored  in  every  fancy,  of  being  encouraged  in 
every  whim,  to  that  desperate  battle  of  life 
awaiting  him  when  he  must  fight  for  his  bread, 
for  his  good  name,  for  his  position,  for  his 
religion." 

"  Yes,"  she  said.  "  And  it  is  difficult  for  me 
to  realize  that  he  will  ever  be  a  man.  You 
know  to  us  he  seems  so  truly  like  an  angel  that 
I  sometimes  tremble  for  fear  God  will  suddenly 
claim  him  ;  but  if  he  lives,  year  by  year  he  will 
lose  his  babyish  sweetness,  grow  less  interest- 


22O          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

ing,  have  a  will  of  his  own,  be  naughty  perhaps 
and  we  shall  be  obliged  to  punish  him  ;  then  he 
will  go  to  school,  become  absorbed  in  his  stud- 
ies, little  by  little  detaching  himself  from  us — 
and  then  !  there  he  is  a  man  and  we  are  no  longer 
those  powerful  lawgivers  '  father '  and  '  moth- 
er ; '  we  are  simply  the  '  old  folks.'  ' 

{"    Lawgivers  !      Ay,    that's    the    word  !      The 

>  J 

general  run  of  parents  seem  to  know  only  two 

states  of  existence :  the  first,  when  they  are 
simply  baby  worshippers ;  the  second,  when 
they  expect  their  children  to  become  abject 
slaves  of  them,  the  parents. 

How  easy  it  is  to  tell  what  state  of  feeling 
exists  in  a  household  between  parents  and 
children,  only  by  observing  how  the  latter  act 
when  the  former  are  present  !  Could  anything 
be  more  depressing  than  to  be  an  inmate  of  a 
home  where  the  children  are  afraid  to  speak 
above  a  whisper  when  "  father  is  in  the  room  " 
— where  "  father's  coming !  "  is  the  signal  for 
as  general  a  scattering,  a  rushing  "  to  arms  "  of 
good  behavior  as  the  terrible  cry  "the 
enemy !  "  is  to  an  army  which  fancied  itself 
secure. 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan!          22 1 

In  such  a  household  as  this  I  scarcely  know 
which  to  pity  most — the  parents  who  lose  the 
delicious  enjoyment  of  intercourse  with  young 
minds  so  much  fresher  and  purer  than  their 
own — or  the  children  whose  recollection  of  their 
parents,  instead  of  being  in  after  years  a  source 
of  blissful  delight,  is  to  be  clouded  by  a  dark 
vision  of  two  grown-up  tyrants,  whose  comfort  , 
and  quietude  were  purchased  at  the  cost  of 
every  innocent  amusement  of  children. 

None  of  our  circle  is  happier  in  sitting  about 
the  Table  than  our  boy  Algie.     He  feels  that 
his  individuality  is  just  as  much  respected  there 
as  it  would  be  if  he  were  fifty  years  old  instead 
of  fifteen.     We  try  to  avoid  all  show  of  author-V 
ity  with  him  as  much  as  possible.     We  try  to  \ 
cultivate  in  him  a  spirit  of  manly  self-respect,  I 
which  will  make  him  fear  to  do  an   unmanly  / 
thing,  for  his  own  sake.     We  would  no  more 
snub  him  than  we  would  snub  Rebecca. 

You  may  see  evidences  in  this  small  man  of  a 
rare  sense  of  honor,  and  of  appreciation  of  his   J 
place  in  our  life — not  as  a  serf,  nor  as  a  creature 
to  be  curbed,  nor  one  to  be  put  under  restraint 
because  of  his  youth— but  as  a  companion  and 


222  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  f 

friend,  a  person  to  whom  we  look  for  comfort, 
cheer,  and  good-fellowship. 

Perhaps  an  incident  will  illustrate  Algie's 
character  in  this  regard  : 

One  day  last  winter  he  remembered  that  he 
had  his  father's  promise  that  he  might  go  skat- 
ing. It  was  Saturday  and  he  was  home  from 
school.  I  suppose  the  little  gentleman  had 
thought  about  it  all  the  week  ;  he  is  a  beautiful 
skater  and  the  Rink  on  Saturdays  is  crowded 
with  children,  and  Algie's  fancy  skating  is 
always  admired.  Why,  once  when  he  was  cut- 
ting initials  and  making  roses  and  doing  all 
sorts  of  "big  things  on  ice,"  a  lot  of  elegant 
people,  girls,  boys,  and  grown  folks,  clustered 
around  and  looked  at  him,  and  when  he 
finished  they  all  clapped  their  hands  and  cried 
bravo!  in  a  way  that  would  have  pleased 
an  opera  singer.  So  you  may  easily  under- 
stand that  he  looked  forward  eagerly  to  Satur- 
day and  skating.  He  had  been  watching  the 
weather  all  the  time,  and  hoping  it  wouldn't 
thaw. 

But  lo  and  behold  !  when  Saturday  came  and 
he  put  on  his  overcoat  and  took  his  skates  in 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  /          223 

one  hand  and  his  cap  in  the  other  and  went  up 
to  his  father  and  said  : 

"  Well,  papa,  I  suppose  I  may  go  skating 
now,  mayn't  I  ?  You  promised  me  I  might, 
you  know." 

Oh  dear,  here  was  a  bad  job  !  His  papa  was 
overwhelmed  with  work,  wanted  him  very  much 
indeed.  He  was  up  to  his  eyes  in  a  sort  of 
work  which  Algie  was  very  handy  at,  and  had 
been  counting  on  this  Saturday  when  he  should 
have  his  boy's  help.  A  shade  of  disappoint- 
ment crept  over  his  face,  which  Algie  noted 
anxiously. 

But  our  man  is  as  honorable  as  our  boy. 

J  \ 

"  If  I  promised  you,  Algie,  that's  the  end  of 

it.     I  wanted  you  so  very  much  this  afternoon  !  / 
All  right.     You  can  go." 

Algie  went. 

Where?  why,  to  the  cupboard  and  hung  up  y 
his  overcoat  and  cap,  and  put  away  his  skates,     I  f 
and  then  came  back  with  his  sweet  face  bright   / 
as    sunshine,    and   laying   his   arm   around   hisJ 
father's  shoulder  affectionately,  he  said : 

"What  was   it   you  wanted  me  to  do,  pa-  I 
pa?" 


224          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

It  cost  the  boy  a  mighty  effort  to  do  this, 
nd  it  was  a  nobler  act  than  it  may  seem,  here 
on  my  page.  For  Algie  knew  perfectly  well 
that  he  was  under  no  sort  of  compulsion — it  was 
his  right  to  go  skating,  and  he  knew  that  his 
rights  were  sacred  in  that  house.  But,  much  as 
r  he  loved  his  favorite  pastime,  he  loved  the  hap- 
piness of  that  home  more,  and  he  could  not 
dcTanything  to  mar  it. 

Algie,  if  he  were  allowed,  would  ask  nothing 
better  than  to  be  permitted  constantly  to  fur- 
nish amusement  for  the  whole  household.  He 
contributes  his  share  to  the  attractions  of  our 
home,  and  enters  into  the  question  of  the  hang- 
ing of  a  new  picture,  or  the  training  of  a  freshly- 
acquired  flower,  or  the  arrangement  of  a  newly- 
furnished  chamber,  with  as  much  gusto  as  any 
of  us.  The  other  day  he  brought  us  in  such  a 
pretty  thing — a  bottle,  all  covered  and  running 
over  with  a  thick  growth  of  beautiful  living 
green.  Oh,  so  pretty  !  What  an  ornament  it 
is  to  our  Table  ! 

He  found  out  the  secret  of  making  this  from 
another  boy ;  and  then  he  took  the  first  thing 
that  came  to  hand  —  a  cracked  bottle  which 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          225 

he  saw  was  of  a  graceful  shape,  with  fat  body 
and  slender  neck  ;  and  he  got  his  Aunt  Rebecca 
to  sew  two  or  three  layers  of  flannel  all  over  it 
and  tightly  fitting  its  form.  Then  he  took  a 
few  cents'  worth  of  curling  cress  seed  and 
soaked  it  over  night ;  next  morning  he  spread 
the  sticky  seed  all  over  the  wet  bottle— planted 
it,,  you  might  say,  in  the  flannel.  Then  he 
stood  the  bottle  in  a  saucer  full  of  water  and 
placed  it  in  the  sunshine  ;  and  every  day  as 
frequently  as  he  found  time  he  basted  the  bottle 
with  water  in  a  spoon — just  as  Norah  does  the 
roast,  with  the  gravy.  And  the  seed  sprouted 
and  covered  the  whole  bottle  with  its  bright 
luxuriance,  and  gave  us  for  our  dear  Table, 
from  our  dear  boy,  a  thing  of  beauty  and  a  joy 
for  several  weeks — during  which  time  every- 
body in  the  house  is  trying  the  experiment,  and 
we  shall  soon  have  more  than  we  know  what  to 
do  with. 

10* 


226           Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 


XXV. 

I  SHOULD  very  much  like  to  see  forever 
abolished  the  absurd  notion  that  athletic  sports 
should  be  confined  to  boys.  If  a  girl  feels  a 
desire  to  climb  fences,  let  her  climb  ;  if  she 
wants  to  play  marbles  or  toss  jackstones,  let 
her  do  these  "  unfeminine  "  things.  But  why 
unfeminine  ?  Have  marbles  or  jackstones  any 
sex? 

On  the  other  hand,  if  a  boy  feels  like  learning 
to  crochet  or  do  worsted-work,  let  not  these 
tastes  be  interfered  with. 

You  smile  at  the  idea  of  any  healthy,  hearty, 
wide-awake  boy  wanting  to  work  in  worsted  ! 
But  you  don't  smile  at  the  idea  of  a  healthy, 
wide-awake  girl  doing  it.  On  the  contrary, 
"  that's  her  sphere." 

Chinese  ruts,  I  tell  you  !  It  is  no  more  ab- 
surd for  a  boy  to  embroider  on  Penelope  canvas 
than  it  is  for  a  man  to  measure  calico  and 
ribbons. 

Two  of  the  choicest  gifts  I  had  last  Christmas 
were  bookmarks  of  Bristol-board  elaborately 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,   Satan  !          227 

embroidered  in  split  zephyr.     Both  were  done 
by  splendid    boy  friends   of    mine,  one   seven 
years  old,   the  other  thirteen.     Their  mothers  ^ 
are  sensible  women,  not  governed  by  arbitrary  / 
notions  of  the  sexuality  of  employments. 

And  the  boys  don't  care  a  farthing  about 
great  social  questions,  but  say  that  it's  real  fun 
of  a  rainy  day  to  sit  down  and  work  book- 
marks. 

At  the  same  time,  if  a  boy  would  rather  dig 
in   the   dirt   than   amuse   himself  with   bright- 
hued  wool,  I  would  let  him,  with  all  my  heart. 
And  I  would  let  a  girl  have  the  same  privi-j 
lege. 

The  cry  which  greets  the  girl  as  soon  as  she 
is  able  to  comprehend  anything  more  difficult  of 
comprehension  than  pap  and  a  perambulator  is 
this  :  Be  a  Lady  ! 

Liberally  translated  this  means,  Be  a  color-  \ 
less,  lifeless,  aimless  dough  doll  ;  be  a  spiritless,  \ 
cowardly  feminine  machine  ;  an  ignoble,  nar-/ 
row-minded  breathing  apparatus. 

What  is  it  to  be  a  lady  ?  Or  rather  what 
should  it  be  ? 

It  should  be  to  be  stronger,  nobler,  more  self- 


228  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

reliant  than  the  common  run  ;  better  educated, 
bigger  hearted,  larger  brained  ;  with  mind  to 
conceive,  hands  to  execute. 

r  And  how  can  any  girl  obtain  that  first  de- 
sideratum for  ladyhood,  health,  if  outdoor  ex- 
ercises are  denied  her  ? 

"Oh,  I  don't  want  my  girl  to  be  a  romp," 
says  Mamma;  "  she  gets  exercise  enough.  She 
is  taking  Calisthenic  lessons." 

A  government  is  best  governed  which  is  least 
governed.  -Exercise  is  healthiest  which  is  not 
taught. 

I  joined  a  Calisthenic  class  once.     It  was  for 
ladies  and  children  ;  the  two  helpless  classes — 
les  Imbeciles  ! 

The  Bloomer  costume  was  recommended  to 
us,  but  it  was  not  indispensable.  Consequently 
it  was  a  motley  group  which  assembled  twice  a 
week  in  a  large  bare  hall,  where  an  out-of-tune 
piano  showed  its  attenuated  legs — so  thin  as 
to  suggest  that  it  needed  Calisthenic  exer- 
cise or  something  else  to  put  vigor  in  them. 
The  piano  jingled — ti  turn  ti  turn — under  the 
emaciated  fingers  of  a  pale  and  worn  wo- 
man ;  and  les  Imbeciles  went  and  took  their 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          229 

places  like  four-and-twenty  blackbirds  all  in  a 
row. 

Provided  with  wooden  dumb-bells  about  as 
heavy  as  gourds,  these  poor  seekers  for  health 
and  strength  lifted  their  weak  arms  up  and 
down — up  and  down — in  time  to  the  music. 
They  stepped  backward,  they  stepped  forward  ; 
to  the  right,  to  the  left ;  keeping  their  anxious 
eyes  on  the  lady  who  stood  in  front  of  them  to 
see  that  they  did  as  she  did. 

"March!"  cries  the  teacher;  and  they  pro 
ceed  to  march.  They  tread  on  each  other's 
heels  ;  they  turn  the  wrong  way ;  they  close  up 
and  squeeze  the  smaller  children  till  the  smaller 
children  squeal  and  struggle  to  save  themselves 
from  being  smothered ;  some  few  drop  their 
dumb-bells  on  their  neighbors'  indignant  toes  ; 
about  half  the  marchers  give  up  and  retreat  to 
benches ;  and  oftener  than  not  the  whole  class 
breaks  up  in  disorder. 

An  awkward  squad,  you  say  ?  Yes,  and  an 
unhappy  squad,  too — doing  all  these  against 
their  natural  inclinations — and  as  a  poor  substi- 
tute for  the  exercise  which  common  sense  ought 
to  have  dictated  from  their  earliest  years. 


230          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

And  half  the  time  ruddy-cheeked  boys  with 
hot  health  exuding  from  every  pore  would 
pause  in  their  outdoor  game  of  bat  and  ball, 
come  and  gaze  in  at  the  hermetically-sealed 
windows  where  we  were  playing  these  awkward 
pranks,  and  laugh  at  us. 

A  half-hour's  romping  in  the  open  air  is  worth 
more  than  all  the  calisthenics  in  the  books,  to  a 
girl  with  any  life  at  all  in  her. 

Nevertheless  I  earnestly  recommend  calisthe- 
nics (as  better  than  no  exercise  at  all)  for  those 
poor  skeletons  of  sickly  women  whose  constitu- 
tions are  ruined,  whose  backs  are  in  a  chronic 
state  of  aching  as  miserably  as  if  they'd  been 
hoeing  a  potato  field,  who  feel  a  never-ending 
"  bearing  down,"  and  are  finally  borne  down — 
and  then,  please  God,  borne  up  ! 

A  sickly  woman  may  perhaps  be  a  healthy 
angel ;  for  that  let  us  ever  prayT  « 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan!          231 


XXVI. 

WELL,  my  lady  is  home  from  school.  She 
has  left  girlhood  behind  her.  What  has  she  got 
in  exchange?  You  have  spent  hundreds  of 
dollars  on  her,  fretted  about  her,  deprived  your- 
self of  her  society,  and  what  return  does  she 
make  for  all  this  ?  Put  your  affection  aside, 
weigh  her  in  the  balance  of  true  womanhood, 
what  is  her  worth  ? 

Is  she  strong  ? — strong  in  body,  mind,  heart, 
soul  ?  Or  is  she  a  complaining  creature  with  a 
white  face,  who  has  to  lie  down  for  half  a  day 
every  time  she  takes  an  hour's  walk  ;  her  char- 
acter as  colorless  as  her  cheeks  ;  her  education 
superficial  to  the  last  degree  ;  forgetting  already 
the  very  things  she  had  at  the  tip  of  her  tongue 
last  week  ;  unable  to  play  the  simplest  piece  on 
the  piano  "without  her  notes;"  her  mind  as 
unformed  as  when  she  was  a  dozen  years  old ; 
her  past  a  record  of  woman-teasing  ;  her  future 
an  expectant  record  of  man-teasing.  No  high 
ambitions,  no  set  career,  no  bright  hopes,  noth- 


232           Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

ing  to  look  forward  to  but  a  round  of  eating, 
drinking,  sleeping,  shopping,  flirting  and  a  hus- 
V,  band. 

Mrs.  Peruser,  do  not  get  angry  at  your 
daughter  if  haply  you  should  find  her  made  on 
this  pattern.  It  is  more  your  fault  than  hers. 
Why,  with  splendid  material,  did  you  cut  this 
creature  so  narrow,  shorten  the  front  breadths 
of  her  soul,  hump  up  into  an  enormous  pannier 
,  the  gross  organs  of  her  self-conceit,  her  vanity, 
her  love  of  wealth  ?  No  wonder  she  is  the 
deformity  she  is. 

I  read  the  other  day  an  interesting  recital  by 
a  lady  who  had  travelled  extensively  in  China. 
We  are  wont  to  look  upon  the  condition  of 
wgmen  in  that  country  as  something  too  pitia- 
ble ;  yet  this  lady  gave  it  as  her  frank  opinion 
that  the  same  general  code  of  laws  for  women 
prevailed  there  as  here.  Women  arej^eptjielg- 
0 ,  less  and  j>retty  because  jt  pleases  men  ;  poor 
parents  make  agonizing  and  humiliating  sacri- 
fices in  order  to  make  their  daughters  "  small- 
feet  "  women,  because  that  is  an  attractive 
feature  to  men— even  as  poor  parents  here 
struggle  to  give  their  daughters  fine  clothes, 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          233 

have  them  taught  attractive  accomplishments, 
for  the  obvious — often  confessed— purpose  of 
catching  a  husband. 

Come  now,  mother  and  father,  why  not  leave 
thisjiusband  out  of  the  question — as  completely 
as  you  leave  the  wife  out  of  the  question  in 
yqur_boy_^case  ?  Suppose  your  girl  has  a  taste 
for  literature  :  why  not  foster  that  taste  ?  Why 
not  in  all  your  conversation  with  her  let  her 
see  that  your  mind  is  full  of  her  future  great 
career?  Why  not  speak  of  it  thus  :  "  We  ex- 
pect you  to  be  a  great  authoress,  my  dear. 
Give  your  whole  mind  to  it.  We  will  set  you 
on  the  road  to  fame  and  fortune  as  fairly  as 
we  can.  We  believe  in  your  talent — and  we 
believe  the  world  too  will  one  day  believe 
in  it." 

I  take  literature  as  an  illustration  merely 
because  it  is  handy ;  the  literary  road  is  wider 
for  woman  now  than  it  once  was  ;  the  entrance 
to  it  is  easier ;  so  easy,  in  fact,  that  there  is 
now  some  jostling  among  the  eager.  But,  sup- 
pose your  daughter  has  other  tastes — no  more 
strange  now  than  literature  once  was — sup_rjose^ 
she.jvvishes  to  be  a  great  traveller.  Shall  you 


234          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

crush  this  wish  out  of  her  breast,  clip  her 
wings,  spend  the  money  which  would  have 
gratified  her  desire  on  flaunting  finery  and  say, 
"  Sit  down  now,  and  suck  your  thumbs  in  the 
approved  womanly  manner  until  you  catch  a 
husband  ?  " 

Do  you  ask,  How  can  a  woman  travel  alone  ? 
That  is  mere  stay-at-home  ignorance.  Thou- 
sands of  women  cross  the  ocean  alone,  yearly. 
Madame  Ida  Pfeiffer  went  twice  around  the 
world  alone,  penetrating  into  the  interior  of 
Africa  and  of  Asia  among  savage  tribes.  The 
lady  to  whom  I  referred  just  now  went  to  China 
and  back  alone.  Other  women,  too,  have  made 
the  circuit  of  the  globe,  travelling  without  male 
escort.  You  may  have  noticed  that  bright 
rosy-cheeked  girl  who  walks  daily  with  brisk 
footsteps  in  Central  Park — sometimes  in  the 
morning,  sometimes  in  the  afternoon,  but 
daily  in  all  weathers.  That  girl  has  been 
all  alone  to  India.  Some  wiseacres  remon- 
strated with  the  friends  with  whom  she  lives 
(she  is  an  orphan)  on  the  impropriety  of  so 
pretty  a  girl  walking  in  a  public  place  like  the 
Central  Park  unattended  by  cavalier,  matron  or 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          235 

servant.     They  thought  it  right  to  be  suggested 
to  her  that  she  should  have  some  escort. 

"  What  an  insult  so  paltry  a  suggestion 
would  be,"  was  the  sensible  reply,  "  to  a  splen- 
did girl  who  has  had  sufficient  courage  and 
self-reliance  to  make  the  voyage  to  India 
alone  !  " 

Suppose  your  daughter  should  desire  to  keep  \ 
a  store  ?     Why  not  set  her  up  in  one  ?     Can't 
afford    it?     You    afford   it  for    your   son.       It  I 
would   wound   your  pride  ?      Ah,    there's   the/ 

wretched  old   pinching  shoe  !     How  I  abomi-/ 

• 
nate  it ! 

Why  can't  you  be  brave,  be  advanced,  con- 
quer this  old-time  habit  of  petty  thought,  show 
your    neighbors  how  much    more   progressive 
and  large-minded  you  are  than  they  ?     Instead 
of  being  ashamed  of  it,  be  proud  of  it.     Have  \ 
her  name  painted  on  a  signboard  in  letters  a  foot    i 
high,  and  let  everybody  see  that  you  rejoice  in   / 
your  daughter's  wide-awake,  nineteenth-century  / 
spirit. 

And  then  see,  too,  how  changed  would  be 
the  demeanor  of  the  young  men  of  her  acquain- 
tance— those  self-glorifying  individuals  who 


236          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

think  every  woman  who  looks  at  them  once  is 
i  in  love  with  them ;  veritable  sultans  who 
imagine  they  have  only  to  fling  down  their 
handkerchiefs,  and  every  girl  in  the  town  will 
scramble  for  the  honor  of  picking  it  up.  Every 
community  is  full  of  these  noble  types  of  ado- 
lescent manhood.  I  know  certainly  a  million 
specimens  "of  my  own  knowledge."  Their 
governing  idea  is  that  most  girls  are  fools  and 
ninnies — fit  for  nothing  but  playthings  ;  and 
when  they  meet  one  who  is  not  of  this  character, 
with  whom  they  cannot  play  the  fool,  then 
dub  her  strong-minded,  a  horrible  new- 
fangled-idead  creature,  masculine,  and  what  not. 
{jBut  they  respect  her  !  } 

Believe  me,  good  parent,  that  the  knowledge 
that  she  is  of  some  importance  in  the  world,  is 
going  to  have  a  career,  to  make  her  mark,  will 
fill  your  daughter  with  renewed  energy  ;  it  will 
\  take  that  pain  out  of  her  back  like  magic  ;  put 
fire  in  her  eyes  ;  color  in  her  cheeks. 

I  have  known  what  it  is  to  be  an  enforced 
dawdler  around  the  house,  without  any  outlet 
for  what  energy  and  ability  I  possessed  ;  eating 
the  bread  of  idleness  and  dependence,  sleeping 


\ 

u 


Get   Thee  'behind  Me,  Satan  !          237 

the  sleep  of  the  sluggard,  living  the  life  of  the 
do-nothing;  yawning,  listless  ennuyee.     And  I 
have  known  what  it  is  to  have  an  OBJECT  put 
in  my  life,  sending  the  blood  coursing  like  a\ 
torrent   through   my   veins,  arousing  my   best 
energies  and  my  earnest  determination  to  show 
those  who  loved  me  what  I  could  do — and  what 
I    did.     I    had   as    many   back-aches   as   your 
daughter,  Mrs.   Peruser,  in  the  old  times.     I'm/ 
better  now,  thank  you.\ 

It  may  strike  you  that  not  all  women  would 
say  Amen  !  to  the  voice  that  announced  to  them 
that  there  was  a  career  open  to  them  in  which 
they    might    go    battle    and    struggle    as    their 
brothers  do  for  a  livelihood.     And  in  conceding 
that  this  is  the  case  I  cannot  refrain  from  asking   , 
whose  fault  it  is  ?     Is  it  the  fault  of  this  human 
creature  whom  God  has  endowed  with   brains 
and  heart  the  same  as  her  brothers  ?     Can  you  '  / 
conceive   that  if  this   girl  of  twenty  had   been--' 
reared  in  a  society  where  absolutely  no  prejudi- 
cial pressure  was  brought  to  bear  to  bias  her 
judgment  and  influence  her  verdict  she  would 
elect  to  live  an  aimless  life,  to  die  after  years  of 
idleness  leaving  no  more  mark  of  her  having 


238           Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

lived  than  the  sparrows  do  when  they  fall  ?  I 
warrant  me,  no  ;  there  is  no  greater  love  of 
idleness,  no  more  leaning  toward  nonentity,  in 
my  sex  than  there  is  in  yours,  dear  sir. 


XXVII. 

THE  French  system  of  business  partnerships 
between  husband  and  wife  is  an  excellent  one 
on  many  accounts.  Girls  are  encouraged,  in 
their  efforts  to  make  themselves  a  career,  by 
the  knowledge  that  they  are  not  interfering 
with  their  chances  for  making  a  happy  marriage 
by  so  doing.  Quite  the  reverse. 

And  I  admit — and  nowhere  in  this  book  will 
you  find  anything  looking  to  a  different  opinion 
— that  a  happy  marriage  is  a  thing  to  which  all 
good  girls  everywhere  do  and  always  will  look 
forward  hopefully,  as  to  a  bright  spot  in  the 
future. 

•  All  I  have  said  about  leaving  girls  free  to 
choose  their  career  as  boys  are  left  free — about 
teaching  girls  to  earn  their  own  livelihood  as 
boys  are  taught — about  encouraging  girls  to  the 


Get  Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !         239 

idea  of  independence  as  a  boy  is  encouraged— 
will  be  sharply  misconstrued  by  my  reader  if  he 
does  not  see  that  my  aim  is,  after  all,  to  glorify 
MARRIAGE. 

I   would   rob  marriage  of  the  curses  whic 
cling  to  it,  like  barnacles  to  a  noble  ship. 

I  would  lift  marriage  out  of  the  mire  of  the 
market-place,  where  now  women  scramble  for 
it  with  unseemly  and  indecent  haste. 

I  would  hedge  it  about  with  more  difficultie^ 
at  the  outset,  so  as  to  prevent  the  happening  of\\ 
that  fatal  malady,  whose  cure  is  sought  in  the 
keen  knife  of  divorce. 

I  would  make  marriage  the  earthly  symbol  of  j 
Heaven,  as  it  was  when  God  ordained  it. 

But,  while  I  admire  the  French  for  many 
sensible  customs,  their  custom  as  regards  court- 
ship between  young  people  is  not  one  of  those 
I  applaud. 

I  remember  my  astonishment  at  a  little  inci- 
dent which  passed  under  my  eyes,  some  years 
ago  in  Paris.  An  American  lady  friend  of  mine 
was  to  give  a  grand  dinner  on  the  occasion  of 
her  birthday.  Some  of  her  French  acquaint- 
ances were  invited. 


240          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  / 

One  afternoon  when  I  was  calling  on  my 
friend,  the  name  of  a  French  Countess  was 
announced.  After  salutations  she  said,  "  I 
came  here  to-day  principally  to  ask  you  a 
question — is  the  young  Baron  de  Luynes  to  be 
at  your  dinner?" 

"  Yes,"  answered  the  American  lady. 

"Then,"  said  the  Countess,  "you  must  not 
feel  hurt  if  I  do  not  bring  my  daughter  Vic- 
tcrine." 

"  Why,  Madame  la  Comtesse,"  said  the 
American  lady,  "  Monsieur  de  Luynes  is  a 
charming  young  man." 

"  True,  true  !  A  very  charming  young  man 
— far  too  charming  to  throw  any  young  girl  in 
contact  with.  He  is  poor  and  in  the  army.  I 
wish  my  daughter  to  marry  a  man  of  equal 
fortune  with  herself,  and  one  who  is  not  a 
soldier." 

When  the  Countess  took  her  leave  I  said  to 
my  friend,  "  Do  you  not  think,  she  was  looking 
rather  too  far  ahead  ?  There  is  a  good  wide 
difference  between  meeting  a  gentleman  at  a 
dinner  party  and  marrying  him." 

"That   is  the   way   with   the    French,"    she 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          241 

/^answered;  "they  never  expose  their  children  to\ 
the  temptation  of  falling  in  love  with  a  person/ 
whom  they  might  not  marry." 

Another  time  I  saw  this  feeling  exemplified 
the  other  way — by  a  man  refusing  to  place 
himself  in  a  similar  position.  An  elderly 
French  lady  of  my  acquaintance  had  a  gentle- 
man friend  who  wanted  to  marry.  He  had  a 
small  income — just  enough  to  support  himself 
— and  he  desired  to  find  a  wife  with  at  least  the 
same  income.  A  lady  with  whom  I  was 
also  acquainted — and  it  is  rather  amusing  to 
know  that  she  was  an  American  lady — in- 
timated to  the  French  lady  that  she  would  like 
to  meet  the  gentleman.  Her  income  was 
nothing  like  what  he  required,  but  she  thought 
if  he  saw  her  he  would  be  so  pleased  with  her 
that  he  would  overlook  that.  (You  know  what 
a  mania  there  is  among  American  women 
abroad  to  marry  Frenchmen  of  quality.)  But 
he  declined  positively  to  meet  her.  All  the 
representations  concerning  her^being  a  delight- 
ful person  only  made  him  more  firm  in  his  re- 
solve. If  she  was  indeed  so  charming,  he  ex- 
plained to  his  elderly  friend,  he  should  certainly 
11 


242          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

become  enamored  of  her  ;  and  that  would  be  a 
fatal  mistake.  The  woman  he  should  marry 
must  have  a  certain  income.  Otherwise  he 
could  not  marry.  He  would  not  marry  even 
such  a  woman  if  she  did  not  please  him  ;  but 
the  income  must  be  there  in  the  first  place. 
Then  they'd  see  about  pleasing  each  other 
afterwards. 

A  French  engaged  couple  are  never  allowed  •• 
to  be  one  instant  alone  together  before  mar-  > 
riage.  The  low  standard  of  morality  among 
men,  and  the  entire  absence  of  knowledge  of 
the  world  in  which  girls  are  kept,  make  French 
parents  feel  this  to  be  necessary.  I  suppose 
they  do  for  the  best  according  to  the  circum- 
stances which  surround  them ;  but  this  is  a  poor 
way  for  young  people  to  find  out  anything 
about  each  other's  character.  I  am  so  far  from 
advocating  this  policy  for  American  girls,  that 
I  think  a  young  girl  and  a  young  man,  even 
without  being  engaged,  should  be  allowed  at 
least  little  snatches  of  conversation  entirely  un- 
disturbed by  the  presence  of  another  party, 
What  is  the  use  of  inviting  a  young  man  to 
come  and  call  on  your  daughter,  and  then 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  f          243 

making  your  daughter  sit  off  in  a  corner  mum- 
chance  while  you — old  father,  or  prim  mother — 
monopolize  all  the  conversation  with  the  young 
man  yourself?  He  didn't  come  here  to  pay 
his  addresses  to  you  ;  and  it  may  happen  to  you 
to  wake  up  to  the  knowledge  that  the  young 
man  finds  it  dull  calling  at  your  house,  and 
being  obliged  to  entertain  old  folks  instead  of 
doing  some  honest  courting  to  your  daughter ; 
and  he  perhaps  comes  to  the  conclusion  that 
your  daughter  isn't  half  so  clever  or  so  lively 
as  your  neighbor's  daughter,  who  is  allowed  to 
see  him  for  half  an  hour  alone  before  the  old 
folks  come  down,  and  perhaps  a  little  five 
minutes  in  the  entry-way  at  parting. 


XXVIII. 

IF  ever  a  duty  was  clearly  marked  out  for  a 
parent  it  is  this  :-to  see  to  it  that  his  pure  daugh- 
ter shall  be  mated  to  no  impure  man.  And  it  is 
rather  late  in  the  day  to  set  about  testing  the 
condition  of  his  morals  when  a  young  man  has 
been  visiting  at  your  house  for  months,  and/ 


244          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

your  daughter  is  hopelessly  infatuated  with  him. 
It  is  because  the  stern  parent  has  developed  his 
sternness  so  stupidly  and  neglectfully  late  in  the 
day,  that  we  so  often  find  children  and  parents 
in  conflicting  attitudes,  and  grievous  wrong 
resulting  for  both. 

I  do  not  believe  there  is  a  father  walking  this 

earth  who  desires  other  than  her  own  happiness 

for  his  daughter ;  but  fathers  are  so  often  too 

careless  or  too  busy  to  note  what  acquaintances 

their  daughters  make  !     And  so  they  jog  along 

with    eyes    blinded    to    danger   until    they    find 

I  enthroned  a  power  of  authority  in  the  shape  of 

j    a  young  man   who   three    months   ago   was   a 

stranger  to  them  all,  but  who  now  wields  an 

influence  stronger  than  the  parents'  own. 

I  knew  a  girl  who  married  a  drunkard — oh, 
but  one  of  those  beastly  drunkards  who  drop 
into  gutters  and  are  dragged  home  at  night  by 
indignant  but  sympathizing  friends,  or  who  lie 
down  on  dramshop  lounges  and  sleep  until 
they  are  pitched  out  doors  by  the  proprietors. 
All  this  at  night,  you  understand.  In  the  day- 
time he  was  bright  enough,  and  very  fascinating 
in  his  ways.  He  began  visiting  at  the  girl's 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          245 

father's  house  along  with  a  lot  of  other  young 
men,  and  her  father  neither  thought  nor  said  nor 
knew    much  about  him.      Suddenly    came    the 
astounding  announcement  to  the  father  that  his\ 
daughter  wished  to  marry  this   young  man —  \ 
ivould  marry  him — or  die  in  the  attempt.     Then  J 
this  tardy  father  set  to  work  to  learn  something 
about    the   character   of   the   young  man  who 
wished  to  take  from  him  the  young  soul  who 
during  long  years — all  the  years  of  her  life — 
had    been    so    tenderly    reared,    so    earnestly 
prayed    for,    so    nearly    idolized ;    and   then  he 
found    out    that    this    proposed    husband    into  ^ 
whose  care  he  was  asked  to  surrender  his  pure  ! 
treasure,    was    the    beastly   drunkard    I    have-' 
shown.     And  what  do  you  suppose  happened 
when  he  told  her  ?     Why,    she   called   him   a  j 
liar!     Yes,   her  grayhaired  father,   whose  au- 
thority she  had  never  before  disputed,  whose  love 
for  her  she  had  never  before  dreamed  of  doubt- 
ing— she   turned   upon  him  with  flashing  eyes 
and  bitter  taunts,  and  said  he  was  a  liar,  and 
that  he  wished  to  break  her  heart.     And  less 
than  a  wejek  after,  she  had  eloped  with  the  man 
who  encouraged  her  to  believe  that  her  father 


246  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

was  a  liar,  and  swore  to  her  that  he  had  never 
touched  a  drop  of  ardent  spirits  in  his  life.  The 
very  night  of  their  marriage  he  reeled  into  the 
room  of  the  hotel  where  they  were  stopping — 
and  in  which  they  had  been  married  about 
three  hours  before — so  drunk  that  he  had  for- 
gotten everything  that  had  happened,  and  was 
perfectly  astounded  to  find  her  in  his  bedroom  ; 
and  even  turned  upon  her  in  his  drunken  rage 
and  called  her  an  immodest  girl,  and  bade  her 
go  home  to  her  father. 

She  went — you  may  imagine  how  heartbro- 
ken. Her  father's  arms  were  open. 

"But  my  darling,"  he  said,  "I  told  you 
this." 

"  Yes,  dear  father,  I  know  you  did,"  she  said, 

•  sobbing  and  hiding  her  head  on  his  breast,  "  but 

I  loved  him  and  I  could  not  believe  it.     Oh, 

why  didn't  you  find  out  something  abou£.  him 

before  he  had  robbed  me  of  my_heart !  " 

Herein  you  will  perhaps  see  illustrated  what 
virtue  there  is  in  the  French  plan  which  allows 
no  acquaintanceship  between  ineligible  young 
people. 

Any  gentleman  who  habitually  visits  a  young 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          247 

lady  ought  to  be  so  perfectly  well  known  to  the 
family  of  that  young  lady  that  if  he  should  pro- 
pose to-morrow,  the  only  question  need  be, 
"  Do  you  love  each  other  sufficiently  ?  "  Every- 
thing else  ought  to  have  been  understood  as 
satisfactory  long  ago  ;  and  if  all  was  not  satis- 
factory, no  acquaintanceship  should  have  been 
allowed. 

"  Victorine  may  not  see  Monsieur  de  Luynes 
at  your  dinner  table,"  said  Madame  la  Comtesse, 
"  because  he  is  not  eligible  as  a  husband.  He 
is  charming,  and  she  is  young.  Dangerous  at- 
tributes !  No,  no  !  She  must  find  her  lover 
and  husband  among  the  eligible  acquaintances 
by  whom  I  shall  surround  her." 


Eligibility  may  mean  with  the  Countess  money 
and  position  simply  ;(jwith  us  it  can  be  made  to\ 

» 

mean  good  character,  pure  morals,  religious/ 
excellence.  Surround  your  daughter  with  these, 
and  let  her  make  her  heart-choice  from  among 
a  group  of  men  so  excellent  that  love  alone  shall 
settle  the  question  as  to  which  of  her  admirers 
she  will  marry. 

Then,  with  God's  blessing  on  them,  let  them 


248          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

freely  exchange  their  tender  ideas  and  heart- 
longings  undisturbed.  You  needn't  sit  like  a 
cat  watching  a  mouse — or  two  mice.  You  have  \ 
reared  your  daughter  with  laxity  indeed  if  you  j 
cannot  trust  to  her  self-protecting  sense  of  honor' 
now.  You  must  have  small  faith  in  the  man  to 
whom  you  are  willing  to  intrust  this  precious 
soul  which  God  put  into  your  hands  to  care  for, 
if  you  have  not  also  confidence  in  him.  Let 
him  pay  his  addresses  to  her  undisturbed  ;  let 
him  say  the  sweet  little  foolish  things  which  stir 
her  heart  so  deeply,  but  which  might  stir  your 
risibles  ;  let  him  sing  his  love-songs  to  her  and 
request  her  to  meet  him  by  moonlight  alone 
(alone,  you  observe  !)  with  such  expression  as 
love  gives  the  human  voice,  without  your  stand- 
ing by  in  grim  judgment  on  his  performances, 
as  if  he  were  an  opera-singer,  and  had  charged 
you  something  for  listening  to  him. 

Those  blissful  hours  of  courtship  !  Are  they 
ever  forgotten  ? — the  hand-pressure  at  the  gate  ; 
the  strolls  under  the  elm-trees  ;  the  snatched 
kiss  under  the  umbrella  on  that  terrible  rainy 
night,  you  know.  Gracious  !  Don't  I  pity  the 
married  couple  who  can't  look  back  on  such 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          249 

sweet,  fond,  foolish  pictures  as  this,  in  memory's 
magic  picture-book  ! 

Husband,  where  is  that  poem  about  "  Making 
Memories,"  which  you  wrote  when  we  were  at 
the  seaside  that  summer  ? 

Ah,  here  it  is  : 

MAKING  MEMORIES. 
Making  beautiful  memories 

To  sweeten  our  lives  in  another  day; 
To  be  remembered  in  the  years 

Waiting  for  us  in  the  far  away. 

Leafy  groves,  where  long,  cool  shades 

Woo  unto  rambling  hour  on  hour  ; 
To  be  remembered  like  a  dream — 

Leaf  and  bird  and  grass  and  flower. 

Under  the  white  moonlight  last  night 

Where  we  whispered,  hand  in  hand, 
Looking  out  from  the  pillar's  shade 

Over  the  beach  with  its  white,  white  sand — 

There  was  a  picture  !     The  far-off  stars, 

The  near-by  daisies,  the  sighing  sea  ; 
The  good-night  pressure  of  hands  ;  the  words 

That  fluttered  down  from  your  window  to  me. 

The  commonest  thing  of  our  to-day 

Will  sometime  be  a  poem,  a  dream  ; 
11* 


250          Get  Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

"Bathed  in  the  light  of  the  far  away, 

How  fair,  how  fair,  these  hours  will  seem  ! 

Much  of  this  is  for  memories — 

Much  perhaps  will  be  forgot ; 
But  the  word  that  told  me  you  loved  me,  love, 

Oh,  that  will  not  !  oh,  that  will  not  ! 

"A  thing  of  that  sort  is  rather  pleasanter  to 
remember  than  it  was  to  experience,"  says  hus- 
band, lighting  a  cigar  ;  "  and  it  wasn't  unpleas- 
ant to  experience,  either." 

I  am  acquainted  with  a  couple  in  the  South 
who  have  been  married  twenty-one  years ! 
Twenty-one  years  !  What  changes  have  hap- 
pened since  these  two  were  romantic  lovers  and 
were  enjoying  their  blissful  courtship  !  Nine 
beings — nine  human  souls — have  entered  their 
world  and  their  love  since  then.  And  their  love 
has  grown  like  compound  interest,  for  each  of 
these  nine  is  loved  as  much  as  the  originals 
themselves,  and  the  originals  love  each  other 
nine  or  ninety  times  more  than  then. 

I  visited  them  recently  in  their  southern 
home.  Though  it  was  early  spring  by  the 
calendar,  the  warmth  of  summer  had  already 
reached  their  climate ;  and  it  was  pleasant  to 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan!          251 

sit  in  their  pretty  though  plain  parlor,  with 
the  windows  open,  and  the  odor  of  South- 
blooming  flowers  scenting  the  air.  Soon  the 
moon  arose  with  that  mellow  radiance,  that 
rich  golden  hue  peculiar  to  the  South,  and 
the  husband  stepped  out  on  the  balcony.  All 
was  still.  He  leaned  through  the  window 
and  said  softly,  "  Dora,  come  out  and  look  at 
the  moonlight." 

Then  it  was  a  sight  to  see  that  serene  and  \ 
stout  mother  of  nine  children  and  one  at  the 
breast — (he  was  there  at  the  precise  moment  I 
am  speaking  of,  too) — hurry  out  with  all  the 
romance  of  a  girl  of  sixteen  to  look  at  the 
moonlight.  He  put  his  arm  about  her  thick 
waist.  "Just  twenty-one  years  ago  to-night,", 
he  said,  "  we  were  married." 

The  stillness  was  kept  so  sacred  and  profound 
by  those  within  the  room,  that  we  could  hear 
the  unromantic  little  rogue — number  nine  — 
voicing  his  content  with  murmurous  lips,  as  the 
three  stood  there  where  the  moonlight  shed  its 
rich  beams  upon  them. 

"It  was  just  such  a  night  as  this,"  said  she, 
"  that  we  roamed  about  Niagara,  where  we 


252          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

went  on  our  wedding  tour.     Oh,  wasn't  that  a 
blissful  time  ?  " 

/  "  Not  more  so  than  this,"  he  answered,  and 
kissed  her  as  tenderly  as  he  did  then,  I'll  be 
bound. 

Ah,  how  we  admired  that  romantic  couple  of 
forty-five  or  so,  as  we  sat  within  and  listened  ! 
'  Surely,  surely,   there   is   nothing   on    earth   so 
!  beautiful  as  wedded  love. 

V  \  My  friends'  house  was  burned  during  the 
war — all  the  loved  accumulations  of  years  de- 
stroyed in  an  hour  by  a  victorious  general's 
torch.  That  was  hard,  wasn't  it  ?  I  think  so. 
We  mingle  our  tears,  talking  of  the  war.  We 
were  on  different  sides,  you  know — but  what 
of  that  ?  What  is  a  political  issue — what  are 
fifty  political  issues — compared  to  a  tried  and 
true  friendship  of  long  years'  duration?  —  at 
least  when  the  political  issue  is  dead,  and  the 
friendship  lives.  "  If  secession  was  a  sin," 
they  say,  "we  have  dearly  paid  for  it."  And 
they  have.  If  all  sins  were  so  terribly  avenged, 
we  should  all  of  us  perhaps  be  more  virtuous — 
or  less.  Meantime  they  are  now,  as  they  were 
before  the  war,  our  brothers  ;  our  dashing, 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          25  j 

handsome,  generous,  warm-hearted  Southern 
brothers ;  and  the  girls  are  our  lovely,  dark- 
eyed,  romantic  Southern  sisters,  who  used  to 
be  the  heroines  of  the  novels  for  their  beauty's 
sake,  and  the  men  the  heroes  for  their  impetu- 
ous sense  of  honor,  their  rash  bravery,  their 
open-handed  generosity. 

Shame  upon  those  writers  North  and  South 
who  have  so  distorted  character  with  their 
venomous  pens  that  the  worst,  the  lowest,  the 
meanest,  the  most  exaggerated  type  of  each 
section  is  paraded  before  the  other  as  a  sample 
of  the  whole  !  By  these  writers  of  the  South, 
the  Freelove  woman  of  New  York  is  held  up  as 
the  type  of  Northern  womanhood — by  these 
writers  of  the  North,  the  brutal  Legree  and  the 
degraded  "low-downer"  are  held  up  as  types 
of  Southern  gentlemen.  Southern  gentlemen  ! 
Why,  this  Philip — this  mati  who  has  been 
married  twenty-one  years,  and  of  whom  I  have 
been  speaking — he  is  a  Southern  gentleman. 
Find  me  a  grander! 


254          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

XXIX. 

y  I  PITY  the  young  man  who  has  to  pay  his 
addresses  at  a  house  where  there  are  several 
sisters.  He  stands  such  a  strong  chance  of 
being  unmercifully  ridiculed  by  the  sisters  he  is 
not  in  love  with.  They,  being  only  lookers-on, 
can  calmly  criticise  everything  about  him. 
The  merry  rogues  burst  with  laughter  at  every 
sign  of  his  lovesickness,  and  lie  awake  giggling 
after  they  have  gone  to  bed,  at  the  remem- 
brance of  the  sigh  he  heaved  when  he  was 
leaving,  and  how  funny  he  looked  when  he  cast 
up  his  eyes  in  his  love-throes. 

Then  of  course  the  sister  whom  he  fancies, 
wishes  to  know  what  "  the  girls  "  think  of  him  ; 
and  without  the  slightest  malice  the  fun-loving 
monkeys  pronounce  him  "  Pretty  nice,  but 
rather  countrified,"  and  tell  Lillie  when  she 
marries  him  she  really  must  not  let  him  sing  his 
hymns  through  his  nose.  And  there  !  The  first 
you  know,  ridicule  from  those  absurd  little  girl- 
critics,  her  sisters,  has  killed  the  incipient  fond- 


Get  Thee  behind  Me,  Satan!          255 

ness  that  was  in  Lillie's  breast,  and  the  poor 
fellow  gets  the  mitten. 

Don't  do  it,  girls  !  If  Sister  has  a  beau,  retire 
discreetly  to  the  background  ;  don't  hear  nor  see 
what  he  says  and  does.  Many  things  in  him  that 
seem  very  absurd  to  you  are  very  sweet  in  her 
eyes;  and  would  remain  so  if  you  didn't  bring 
to  bear  the  weight  of  your  trifling  judgment  on 
it,  and  so  change  admiration  into  a  sense  of  her 
beau's  being  a  laughing-stock — which  no  girl 
can  stand. 

Just  think  how  you  would  feel,  Miss  Laugh- 
ing-Eyes, if  Charley  Goodboy  were  to  bring  his 
brothers  with  him  when  he  comes  to  pay  his  ad- 
dresses to  you,  and  you  were  forced  to  play  the 
agreeable  while  you  knew  your  every  action  was 
under  sharp  criticism — and  the  criticism  of  ridi- 
cule— from  the  young  gentlemen.  But  the 
parallel  to  this  has  more  than  once  come  to  my 
knowledge. 

I  knew  a  household  where  there  were  four 
sisters — four  sweet,  happy,  pretty,  healthy  girls. 
They  were  extremely  attached  to  each  other, 
this  Fanny,  Libbie,  Ursula  (alias  Puss)  and 
Mamie.  I  suppose  they  never  had  in  all  their 


256          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

lives  a  secret  from  each  other,  and  each  thought 
that  the  three  others  were  the  three  most 
splendid  girls  that  ever  trod  the  earth. 

There  wasn't  one  atom  of  selfishness  in  these 
girls.  They  were  rather  a  large  party,  you  see, 
and  it  wasn't  always  convenient  to  take  all  of 
them  out  pleasuring  at  once  ;  for  instance,  in 
any  ordinary  carriage,  the  four  girls  filled  it,  and 
there  wasn't  room  for  anybody  else  ;  so  their 
all  going  at  once  wasn't  to  be  thought  of ;  and 
then  came  the  scramble  as  to  who  should  go. 
Each  became  stricken  with  the  determination  to 
stay  at  home,  so  that  the  others  might  have  the 
enjoyment. 

"  Now  Mamie,  you  shall  go  !  You  didn't  go 
last  time — go,  darling  !  " 

"  No,  deary — you  go ;  I'd  rather  you  and 
Puss  should  go.  It'll  do  you  good." 

"  Well,  I  won't  go,  that's  flat  !  Fannie  needs 
a  drive  more  than  I  do." 

So  these  dear  little  self-abnegating  darlings 
would  go  on  until  you  became  almost  as  exas- 
perated as  if  they  were  disputing  selfishly  in- 
stead of  generously.  One  day  last  winter 
their  father,  who  writes  for  the  papers,  got  two 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          257 

tickets  for  Nilsson  sent  him,  and  he  could  only 
take  one  of  the  girls.  Goodness  gracious  ! 
What  a  maddening,  self-sacrificing  time  they 
did  have  about  that !  Their  father  got  angry  at 
last,  and  said  He'd  be  hanged  if  any  of  them 
should  go  ;  he'd  burn  the  ticket  up,  or  take 
Aunt  Polly,  who  is  as  deaf  as  a  post,  and  nearly 
blind  into  the  bargain. 

It's  just  the  same  way  about  the  girls'  cloth- 
ing. If  one  gets  something  new,  the  first  thing 
she  does  is  to  go  steal  her  arm  around  the  waist' 
or  neck  of  one  of  her  sisters,  and  try  to  re- 
linquish the  new  finery.  Anything  really  fresh 
and  pretty  goes  a  begging,  for  all  are  too  un- 
selfish to  appropriate  it.  After  it's  faded  per- 
haps they  come  to  an  understanding,  and  agree 
to  wear  it  by  turns.  Thus  sashes,  neck-ribbons, 
collars,  slippers,  rings,  brooches  and  sleeve- 
buttons  belong  to  this  commonwealth  of  four 
members. 

They  have  solved  many  a  Utopian  scheme  ; 
their  very  wardrobe  is  cooperative.  Eight  will- 
ing hands  accomplish  household  labors  in  a 
jiffy-  They  draw  lots  for  the  sweeping,  and  the 
one  who  gets  it  is  triumphant,  and  the  three 


258  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan! 

others  fret  because  they  fear  it  is  too  hard  for 
her.  Finally  I  may  say  that  you  can't  please 
Fatinie  half  so  much  any  other  way  as  you  can 
by  "  raving  "  over  the  accomplishments  of  Lib- 
bie,  Puss,  and  Mamie  ;  and  to  gain  the  hearts 
of  Mamie,  Puss,  and  Libbie  you  have  only  to 
sing  the  praises  of  their  sister  Fan. 

Of  course  they  have  long  ago  settled  what 
sort  of  man  they  are  going  to  marry.  This 
would  be  all  very  well  except  that  the  kind  of 
man  they  have  fixed  on  don't  exist.  This,  you 
will  confess,  is  a  drawback  ;  but  if  their  beau 
ideal  did  exist,  I  pity  the  poor  fellow  if  he 
should  come  along  and  there  should  be  only 
one  of  him  !  What  a  scrambling  there  would 
be  on  the  part  of  the  four  self-sacrificers  to  pre- 
sent him  each  to  the  other  !  He'd  have  to  sub- 
mit to  a  worse  fate  than  Solomon's  baby.  (On 
second  thought  it  was  not  Solomon's  baby,  but 
only  a  baby  he  threatened  to  halve.) 

The  kind  of  man  the  four  girls  had  settled  to 
marry  (a  long  time  before  Bob  Stevens  fell  in 
love  with  Fan)  was  just  twenty-one  and  a,half 
years  old  ;  six  feet  high  ;  so  straight  he  leaned 
the  other  way;  fall  in  his  back  ;  small  feet  done 


Get  Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          259 

up  in  tight  patent-leather  boots  ;  complexion  of 
marble  whiteness  ;  nose  straight  on  a  line  with 
his  forehead,  like  the  nose  of  a  Grecian  statue ; 
deep,  large,  blue  eyes ;  black  hair  curling  all 
over  his  head  ;  long,  silky,  black  moustache, 
excruciatingly  waxed  at  the  ends  ;  ruby-red 
lips,  and  teeth  as  regular  as  the  false  sets  in  the 
dentist's  show-case.  His  conversation  was  to 
be  one  stream  of  poetical  quotation  ;  and  he 
was  to  bow  half-way  to  the  ground  every  time 
he  encountered  the  sisters,  without  in  the  least 
disturbing  the  fall  of  his  trouser-leg  over  his 
instep.  He  was  to  be  a  poet,  a  scholar,  and  a 
philosopher ;  he  was  to  sing  like  Mario  and 
waltz  like  Taglioni ;  and  rich- — oh,  the  Count  of 
Monte  Cristo  or  old  Croesus  himself  shouldn't 
be  richer ! 

And  that  isn't  half. 

Meantime,  here  was  plain  Robert  Stevens 
desperately  in  love  with  Fan  ! 

Poor  Bob  !  He  couldn't  keep  away.  Every 
evening  during  the  soft  summer  when  his  fond- 
ness for  Fan  first  developed  itself,  he  would 
walk  timidly  up  to  the  girls'  doorstep  after 
supper,  and  face  the  whole  four  of  them,  and 


260          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  / 

say,  "Good  evening,  Miss  Fannie.     Hope  I  see 
you  well." 

How  that  Puss  and  Mamie  did  have  this 
phrase  over  and  over  !  Little  rascals,  they  slept 
two  in  a  bed  and  all  four  in  one  large  room, 
and  before  Fan  got  her  eyes  open  in  the  morn- 
ing they  would  hop  out  in  their  night-clothes, 
and  go  and  half  smother  her  with  kisses  and 
shout  in  her  ear  "  Good  morning,  Miss  Fannie. 
Hope  I  see  you  well." 

/  "  Oh,  don't  tease  me  so,  girls,  don't!"  poor 
/  Fan  would  say ;  "  I  don't  care  for  him — I  don't 
/  indeed." 

Meantime  every  day  Fannie  was  feeling  the 

influence  of  a  sweet  and  strong  nature  which 

was  pouring  out  its  wealth  of  adoration  at  her 

feet.     How  she  wished  the  girls  would  think 

\     him   "  nice  ! "     How  she  would   have  enjoyed 

\Joving  him  if  those  teases  had  only  let  her  ! 

"  Fully  recognizing  that  his  moral  character 
is  irreproachable,  Fan,"  said  Libbie,  "it  yet 
cannot  be  concealed  that  his  hands  are  beety — 
undeniably,  manifestly,  incontrovertibly,  out- 
rageously, not-to-be-stoodably  beety." 

"  Tis  true,  'tis  pity,  and  pity  'tis,  'tis  true," 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,   Satan  !          261 

said  Puss,  who  was  reading  up  Shakespeare  in 
a  great  hurry  so  as  to  be  ready  for  that  beau- 
ideal  of  a  beau  who  was  going  to  come  along 
so  soon. 

"  Why  girls,  are  they  so  very  red?  "  gasped 
poor  Fan;  "I'm  not — in  love — with  him,  you 
know — but  really  I  didn't  notice  that  they  were 
so  very  red  !  " 

"  Beets  are  the  only  simile,"  said  the  merci- 
less Libbie. 

As  the  evenings  grew  cool  in  the  autumn, 
Robert  had  to  be  asked  into  the  parlor.  One 
night  the  three  tormentors  got  him  to  sing. 
Fannie  was  on  pins  and  needles,  but  he  thought 
she  wanted  him  to  sing  and  sing  he  did.  Now, 
Robert  had  a  sweet  voice  and  there  was  nothing 
ludicrous  about  his  singing.  But  you  can  find 
spots  on  the  sun  if  you  are  determined  to  look 
for  them. 

He'd  no  sooner  gone  than  the  three  girls 
made  a  dive  at  the  piano. 

"  When  other  leaps  and  otherer  hearts" — 

"  Oh,  Libbie,  he  didn't  sing  it  in  that  way  !  " 
groaned  Fannie,  laughing  in  spite  of  herself. 


I 


262          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  f 

"  Then  you'll  rememberher  me  !  " 

"  Flat  me — awfully  nasal  me — the  mi  so  flat 
it's  a  re"  corrected  Mamie. 

The  result  of  all  this  was  inevitable.  Love 
could  not  grow  in  such  an  atmosphere.  Fannie 
began  to  avoid  him.  Robert  was  in  truth  a 
young  man  of  keen  perceptions  and  great 
power  of  will,  and  he  perceived  her  aim  and 
quietly  withdrew  from  a  suit  which  was  not 
agreeable. 

Fannie  didn't  mean  quite  so  much  as  that. 
In  fact  she  didn't  mean  anything — except  that 
she  didn't  like  to  be  laughed  at  quite  so  much  ; 
that  was  all. 

Two  years  after — and  the  beau-ideal  was  as 
far  from  making  his  appearance  as  ever — Robert 
Stevens's  wedding-cards,  elegantly  engraved, 
came  to  hand.  He  hadn't  seemed  ludicrous  in 
the  eyes  of  the  richest,  as  well  as  one  of  the 
handsomest  and  most  refined  girls  in  town.  In 
fact,  Fan  and  her  sisters  looked  up  to  Miss 
Beaumont  much  as  a  family  of  darling,  cun- 
ning, frisky  little  King  Charles  spaniels  might 
look  up  to  a  tall,  slender,  aristocratic  and 
altogether  superb  Italian  greyhound.  And 


Get   Thee  beJdnd  Me,  Satan  !          263 

Robert   had    won    Miss  Beaumont's  hand    and 
heart. 

Fan  and  the  three  other  girls  went  to  the 
wedding.  The  church  was  crowded  and  they 
had  to  stand  right  out  at  the  door ;  almost  on 
the  very  steps.  When  the  ceremony  was  over, 
and  Robert  came  out  with  his  bride  on  his  arm 
("White  satin  and  real  point,"  whispered  Lib- 
bie)  he  lifted  his  hat  politely,  and  bowing  quite 
low  ("  his  trouser-legs  perfectly  undisturbed 
over  his  instep,"  said  Puss  afterwards)  he  looked 
Fan  straight  in  the  eye  and  said,  "  Good  eve- 
ning, Miss  Fanny.  Hope  I  see  you  well ! " 


XXX. 

You  will  say  that  this  little  story  implies  the  i 
existence  of  a  sort  of  love  which  needs  the  fos- 
tering approbation  of  others  to  insure  its  growth 
and  health.  Do  you  feel  scorn  for  such  love  as 
this  ? — say  it  is  unworthy  the  name  ? — merits 
contempt  ?  Consider  conditions. 

A  girl  is  reared  in  a  state  of  absolute  depen- 
dence on  others.      She  has — as  people  call  it — 


264          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

"no  mind  of  her  own."  They  mean  by  this 
that  she  has  never  been  taught  to  use  the  mind 
which  she  undoubtedly  has,  and  the  implication 
of  lack  of  mind  in  her  would  be  resented  heartily 
enough,  if  it  were  couched  in  other  than  the 
ambiguous  phraseology  of  these  cant  expressions 
which  mean  everything  and  nothing,  and  all 
shades  between,  as  he  who  utters  chooses. 

I  know  a  girl — and  her  case  is  by  no  means  a 
rare  one — who  never  bought  a  pair  of  shoes  for 
herself  until  after  she  was  twenty  years  of  age. 
Flanked — like  the  girls  I  have  just  mentioned — 
by  loving  sisters,  mother,  and  sometimes  also 
by  cousins  and  friends,  she  would  proceed  to 
the  shoe-shop,  and  after  the  merits  of  the  lea- 
ther, the  sewing,  the  cut,  the  finish,  and  the  fit 
of  the  different  samples  had  been  judged  by  the 
assembly,  she  would  find  herself  the  possessor 
of  the  necessary  shoes.  You  will  not  laugh 
when  I  tell  you  that  it  was  a  real  trial  to  this 
girl  when — after  her  marriage,  and  when  far 
away  from  her  family — she  found  herself  put 
to  the  terrible  ordeal  of  choosing  for  herself  a 
pair  of  shoes.  She  was,  indeed,  very  much  dis- 
tressed about  it. 


Get   TJiee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          265 

"  I  don't  know  whether  they  fit  me  or  not !  " 
she  whimpered  (when  the  shoemaker  asked, 
"How  does  them  do?"),  "and  I  don't  know 
whether  you're  cheating  me  or  not.  I  don't 
know  whether  shoes  ought  to  cost  one  dollar  or 
twenty." 

Which  confession  of  ignorance  was  equalled 
by  a  young  housekeeper  who  said  to  me  confi- 
dentially, "  I  positively  don't  know  whether  a 
pound  of  butter  is  as  big  as  a  cheese  or  as  small 
as  an  egg  ;  but  I  don't  think  the  servants  sus- 
pect. I  always  look  so  wise  and  shake  my  head 
so  disapprovingly  at  everything." 

Gussie  and  I  went  to  church  together,  the 
other  day,  to  hear  a  young  Congregationalist 
minister.  I  love  the  Congregationalist  service 
— so  simple,  so  earnest,  so  hearty.  No  offense  to 
those  dear  brothers  and  sisters  who  are  not  Con- 
gregationalists,  but  there  is  something  about 
the  unassuming  simplicity  of  this  service  which 
wins  me  more  than  most  others.  However, 
that  is  not  the  point.  The  point  is,  that  I  was 
charmed  with  this  young  minister's  sermon  ;  so 
fresh, .so  soulful,  so  honest.  I  thank  you  for  the 
good  it  did  me,  young  reverend,  here  on  my 

12 


266           Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

printed  page.  Gussie  asked  me  how  I  liked  it 
when  we  left  the  church.  I  told  her  I  was 
charmed — was  not  she  ?  ' 

"  Y-e-s,—  yes." 

And  then  the  minister — so  young,  so  honest, 
so  evidently  pure-hearted — was  he  not  one  to  be 
admired? 

"  Y-e-s"  again — yes  ;  but  there  was  a  mental 
reservation  ;  truthful  little  Gussie  could  not  con- 
ceal that  from  my  prying  eyes.  By  and  by  out 
it  came.  Did  I  not  think  he  had  Rather  a  Big 
Chin? 

Was  I  surprised  ?     A  little.     Did  I  laugh  ? 

/No.      Did   I    treat  this   curious   criticism   with 
grand  contempt — superior  scorn  ?     Not  at  all. 
I  know  the   girl-heart  and   the   girl-mind   too 
well.     Besides,  I  love  Gussie  dearly,  and  I  con- 
sider her  a  girl  of  keen  intelligence  ;  but  she  has 
not  lived  so  many  years  as  I  ;  and  perhaps  she 
has  a  girlish  beau-ideal  of  an  impossibly  beauti- 
ful man,  like  the  four  sisters  of  the  preceding 
chapter — a  beau-ideal  by  which  she  tries  even 
\    her  ministers  on  occasion,  as  well  as  her  beaux. 
\  I  granted 'the  undeniable  fact  that  the  young 
\  minister  had  Rather  a  Big  Chin —in  fact,  Quite 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          267 

a  Big  Chin.  What  then  ?  Why,  that  was  so 
much  in  his  favor  !  I  cited  all  the  Big  Chins  of 
history — brought  up  a  long  line  of  distinguished 
Big  Chins,  and  finally  concluded  my  preach  with 
an  eloquent  peroration  on  the  strength,  power, 
bull-dog  perseverance  and  thorough  value  of  a 
well-directed  and  religious-minded  Big  Chin. 
And  Gussie  saw  that  and  other  Big  Chins  y 
thenceforth  with  new,  and  approving,  eyes. 

Now,  what  I  mean  to  urge  regarding  girls  in\ 
general  is,  that  their  judgment — even  the  judg- 
ment of  the  bright,  intelligent,  quick-witted  and 
discerning_arnong  them — is,  after  all,  the  callow 
judgment  of  youth.  And  being  such,  it  is  likely 
to  trip  on  some  contemptibly  insignificant  mat- 
ter like  this  of  chins,  and  fall  into  errors  that  are 
simply  appalling  to  think  of. 

If  there  is  anything  more  absurd  in  all  mod- 
ern civilization  than  the  practice  of  setting  cal- 
low girls  and  green  boys  to  passing  judgment  on 
their  fellow-creatures  of  the  opposite  sex,  with  a 
view  to  the  gravest  relations  of  life,  I  cannot 
imagine  what  it  is. 

It  is  to  me  one  of  the  best  possible  auguries 
for  the  future  of  a  young  girl,  that  she  is  anx- 


268  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

ious  others  should  smile  upon  and  approve  her 
love.  In  itself,  it  is  a  promise  of  womanly  wis- 
dom most  cheering  to  behold.  But,  like  many 
another  good  thing,  it  needs  the  right  sort  of 
treatment,  if  it  is  to  yield  good  fruit.  A  peach- 
tree  is  a  good  thing,  but  it  will  bear  no  fruit  if  it 
be  not  properly  tended.  The  very  best  qualities  ] 

1  in  girls  are  often  wasted — die  without  so  much 
as  a  blossom,  much  less  fruit — simply  from  want 
of  that  sort  of  care  which  the  good  gardener 
gives  the  flower  and  the  good  parent  the  child. 
The  good  gardener  does  not  try  to  twist  the 
graceful  lily  into  a  climbing  vine  ;  he  does  notV 

1  seek  to  make  violets  grow  on  rose-bushes.  All 
his  aim  is,  to  train  the  plant,  and  help  it  to  grow 
in  that  direction  which  is  natural  to  it. 

When  parents  realize  that  herein — and  herein 
alone — lies  their  office,  they  will  not  do  violence 
to  their  daughters'  hearts  in  anything.  They 
will  know  how  to  deal  with  love. 


Get  Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !         269 


XXXI. 

I  RATHES_fayor  the  "  stern  parent."  myself. 
»        -^—  —  - 

It  is  a  delicate  matter  to  assail  old  traditions 
in  sentimental  literature.  People  rebel  so  in- 
dignantly at  anything  which  seems  to  lay  disre- 
spectful hands  on  their  sentimental  idols, 

I  have  seen  daggers  looking  from  the  eyes  of 
painfully  young  pers'ons  when,  in  speaking  to 
audiences,  I  have  assailed  the  favorite  old  ro- 
mantic situations  of  the  story-tellers  in  respect 
to  the  fond  heroine  who  loves  the  penniless 
hero,  and  wants  to  live  on  moonshine  instead  of 
beefsteak. 

"  It  is  not  so  much  the  man,"  says  the  hand- 
some Bella  Wilfer,  in  Our  Mutual  Friend  t  "as 
the  establishment." 

It  has  been  the  custom  of  novelists  from  time 
immemorial  to  hold  up  to  scorn  and  obloquy 
the  base  creature  who  marries  for  an  establish- 
ment, and  to  exalt  to  the  seventh  heaven  of  he- 
roinism  the  young  lady  who  marries  for  love. 

The  "stern  parent,"  who,  having  been 
through  years  enough  of  life  to  have  learned 


270          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

common  sense,  wishes  to  assure  his  daughter's 
future  comfort,  according  to  existing  states  of 
society — the  father  with  some  practical  "knowl- 
edge of  the  cost  of  bread  and  butter,  and  the 
shiftlessness  of  the  average  young  man,  becomes 
a  sharer  in  the  obloquy  which  falls  upon  the 
"  mercenary." 

But  I  shudder  to  think  of  the  state  of  things 
we  should  presently  have  on  our  hands  if  the- 
common-sense  papas  were  all  to  die  off  sudden- 
ly, and  leave  the  girls  free  to  rush  headlong  into 
"  love-matches." 

Sufficient  to  the  generation  is  the  evil  thereof. 
/  It  is  a  blessing  that  so  many  papas  remain  to 

|  act  as  balance-wheels  to  the  disjointed  machi- 
\- —  >. — "•—"•  +++*.  **• 

inery  of  youthful  passion. 

Do  I  then  advocate  the  marrying  for  an  es- 
tablishment ?  • 

I  no  more  advocate  marrying  for  an  establish- 
ment than  I  advocate  marrying  for  fun. 

Marrying  for  fun  is,  however  so  very  popu- 
lar among  the  story-tellers  that,  for  a  change,  I 
should  not  object  to  reading  a  story  in  which 
the  heroine  shquldjiave  brains  in  her  head  as 
well  as  love — so  called — in  her  heart.  At  any 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  /          271 

rate,  I  should  like  to  have  real-life  girls  act  as  if 
they  were  made  on  that  pattern  ;  and  before  con- 
senting to  marry  the  adorable  Charlie  or  Billy  or 
Josiah,  find  out  whether  the  young  man  is  equal 
to  the  requirements  of  a,  weekly  board-bill  for 
two,  with  a  prospect  of  more.  If  it  should  be 
carried  to  the  extent  of  finding  out  whether  the 
adorable  Charlie  or  Billy  or  Josiah  could  pay 
house-rent  and  market  bills,  and  the  divers  sun- 
dries which  are  involved  in  "keeping  house," 
I  should  not  look  upon  it  as  altogether  hei- 
nous. 

I  cannot  frown  upon  any  human  being  who 
seeks  to  escape  from  the  typical  boarding-house 
— that  hotbed  of  scandals  and  iniquities  whose 
inventor  deserves  Sancho  Panza's  blessing — in- 
verted. 

So  long  as  society  is  arranged  in  such  a  man- 
ner that  the  man  is  the  bread-winner  and  wom- 
an's chief  duty  is  to  take  care  of  his  babies  and 
keep  his  house  in  order,  it  ought  to  be  a  by-law 
of  the  system  that  no  girl  shall  enter  upon  wed- 
lock until  she  sees  the  h^^_s_he_has.±Q_.ke.ep.  as 
well  as^the  man  she  is  to  keep  itjor. 

But  if  you  think  because  I  say  this  that  I  am 


272          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

in  favor  of  that  common  crime  known  as  "  mar- 
rying for  money,"  you  are  greatly  mistaken. 

The  woman  who  dares  to  put  her  heart  out 
of  the  question,  and  without  a  thought  of  love 
to  sell  herself  to  a  man  whose  material  wealth 


she  desires  to  share  is — to  put  it  mildly— a  traf- 
ficker. That  she  responds  in  the  proper  places 
in  the  marriage-service,  holding  the  hand  of  the 
man  to  whom  she  gives  her  body,  but  who  has 
no  place  in  herTTeart^that  she  is  in  the  eye  of 
the  law  henceforth  his  wife — that  does  not  help 
her.  In  the  eye  of  God  she  is  no  more  his  wife 
than  I  am. 

I  knew  one  such  woman 

Do  not,  whatever  you  do,  fall  into  the  mistake 
of  supposing  that  I  do  not  know  "dozens  of  such 
women — for  I  do,  and  so  do  you,  and  so  do  we 
all. 

I  knew  one  such  woman,  who  married  a  man 
she  did  not  love,  but  whose  money  she  wanted 
to  finger.  She  would  have  recoiled  in  horror 
from  the  intimation  that  she  bartered  away  her 
chastity  by  the_act.  She  was"voujpg< beautiful, 
well-bred,  and  no  more  j^Jered  to  sin  than  the 
t  of  us. 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          273 

Soon  after  her  marriage  her  husband  went 
into  Wall  Street  and  made  kites  of  his  money. 
Soon  after  that  he  took  to  the  flowing  bowl  for 
consolation.  Every  night  he  came  home  to 
dinner  completely  bowled  over. 

And  presently  his  wife  found  out  that  her  life 
was  unbearable  and  that  she  hated  the  drunken 
lout  to  whom  she  was  tied  for  life.  His  money 
was  gone,  and  with  it  all  was  gone  which  made 
him  tolerable  to  her.  She  had  taken  a  man  for 
the  sake  of  an  "establishment"  in  the  sense 
commonly  understood.  And  when  she  ran 
away  one  day  last  spring  with  a  penniless  young 
dandy  whom  she  had  met  at  their  common 
boarding-house,  she  fancied  she  had  now  taken 
a  man  for  his  own  sake. 

He  had  excited  "pleasing  sensations  "  in  her 
discontented  breast,  and  so — for  the  second 


time — she  had  outraged  wifehood  by  taking  a 
man  without  the  marriage  of  Hpavpri 

(Webster,  you  know,  defines  the  verb  to  love 
as  "  to  regard  with  affection  on  account  of  some 
qualities  which  excite  pleasing  sensations.") 

What  then  are  we  to  marry  for,  if  not  for  love 
nor  for  an  establishment  ?  These  are  the  two 
incitements  to  marriage. 

12* 


274          Get  Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

Je  veux  bien.     Nobody  denies  that. 

You  are  to  marry — if  you  will  pardon  my 
speaking  in  a  manner  somewhat  ex  cathedra — 
forTrueJLpve,  and  for  nothing  else  whatever. 
But  you  are  to  use  at  least  as  good  a  judgment 
in  the  matter  as  that  which  a  business  man  uses 
in  investing  his  capital — or — you  are  to  take  the 
consequences. 

/You  are  to  treatypur_lpve  as  the  precious 
soul-capital  of  your  life,  and  you  are  no  more 
to  venture  it  in  rash  and  unconsidercd  specula- 
tions than  a  wise  business  man  ventures  his 
money  in  such  a  way.  He  studies  the  matter 
carefully.  Do  you  at  least  as  much.  Some- 
times he  fails  in  spite  of  all.  So  may  you. 
But  then  it  is  your  misfortune,  not  your  fault  ; 
and  you  will  bear  failure  better,  in  this  case,  if 
ou  are  a  true-hearted  woman. 

If  Scylla  and  Charybdis  are_pointed  out  to 
/  you,  you  can  at  least  try  to  avoid  wrecking 
I  yourself  upon  them. 

What  is  wanted  on  the  one  hand  is  a  genuine 
sense  of  VIRTUE,  to  prevent  the  cold-hearted 
from  converting  marriage  into  legalized  sin. 

What  is  wanted  on  the  other  hand  is  COM- 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          275 

MON  SENSE,  to  prevent  the  hot-headed  from\ 
rushing  into  the  fire  ofjpassion  as  moths  rush  J 
into  flame. 

Marriage  'is  the   holiest   and   loveliest  thing 
there   is  in  this  world.     Love    is  thejbasis  of 
marriage.  (G\nd  of  no  one  thing  in  the  world  \ 
we  inhabit  is  so  much  and  such  hopeless  twad-v 
die  written  as  of  this  same  love. 

In  spite  of  my  deep  respect  for  Noah  Web- 
ster I  think  his  definition  of  love  is  about  as 
puerile  a  thing  as  ever  was  printed.  Love 
cannot  be  defined.  Nevertheless  I  see  these 
truths  plainly  concerning  it : 

1.  That  passion,  love's  counterfeit,  is  no  more 
love  than  hunger  is. 

2.  That  love  does  not  burn  with  serene  and 
beautiful  flame  in  the  lamp  of  sordid  and  un- 
worthy lives. 

3.  That  love  does  not  endure  to  the  end  un- 
less it  be  sustained  by  virtue  in  the  lover  and 
the  beloved. 

4.  And  that  love  will  die,  just  as  purity  will 
vanish,  just  as  men  will  turn  from  morality  to 
sin,   from   righteousness   to   crime,    where   the 
causes  are  sufficient  to  effect  the  change. 


276          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 


XXXII. 

AFTER  all,  the  thing  which  seems  to  me  most 
wonderful  in  this  world  is,  that  truth  should  be 
so  old  !  You  think  you  have  discovered  some- 
thing new  in  the  way  of  advanced  thought, 
fresh  fancy,  progressive  idea,  when,  lo  and  be- 
hold !  somebody  comes  along  and  tells  you  the 
Chinese  had  it  fifteen  hundred  centuries  before 
Christ.  Confucius  had  it  set  to  music,  and 
Solomon  danced  a  pas  seul  to  it  on  the  back- 
stoop  of  his  Temple. 

As  many  as  a  hundred  times  during  the 
progress  of  this  book  I  have»been  on  the  point 
of  scratching  out  this  and  that  sentence  because 
somebody  else  said  something  like  that  long 
ago  ;  then  I  have  hesitated,  because  if  I  once 
began  with  that  idea,  I  felt  I  might  as  well 
scratch  the  whole  book  out  and  be  done  with  it. 

After  that,  to  be  consistent,  I  might  go  and 
scratch  myself  out,  because  I  individually  have 
been  repeated  ever  since  God  made  Eve  ;  my 
hair,  my  eyes,  my  nose,  my  ears,  my  teeth, 
have  all  passed  through  a  most  bewildering 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          277 

number  of  editions  ;  and  yet  our  neighbor  Mrs. 
Perkins  had  last  night  a  little  daughter,  and 
the  whole  household  is  as  much  fluttered  and 
excited  about  it  as  if  this  little  daughter  were 
Number  One  of  a  new  species. 

I  hate  to  feel  called  on  to  quote  that  tattered 
and  torn  Solomonism  which  gasps  forth  every 
day  that  there  is  nothing  new  under  the  sun. 
Yet  most  emphatically  this  is  thus.     There  is  j 
not  a  grand  thought  preached  from  any  pulpity 
— there  is  not  a  noble  line  penned  on  any  page,   I 
which  has  not    been  thought  ages  ago,  which 
has  not  been  penned  long  years  before  any  of 
us    were    born.      You    may  turn   your   phrase 
freshly,  you  may  clothe  your  idea  in  quaint  ne- 
ologisms,  but  the  idea  has    been  used  before, 
be  sure  of  it.     It    has   been    said — and  betted 
upon  (which  indicates  a  stronger  certainty  with 
some    people) — that   there    is    not    a    brilliant 
thought  the  human  mind  is  capable  of  thinking 
which  has  not  bee.n  brilliantly  thought  and  well  J 
expressed   by  Shakespeare.      I   have  been  fa- 
miliar with  Shakespeare  since  my  earliest  girl- 
hood, yet  it  never  struck  me  that  the  Bard  had 
said .     But  wait. 


278  Get   Thee  behind  .Me,  Satan  ! 

We  have  three  birds — gorgeous  bits  of  color, 
rarely  seen  here  in  the  North.  They  are  called 
"  Nonpareils  "  in  the  South,  and  they  are  bright 
gems  of  the  tropics  quite  glorious  to  behold. 
The  man  of  whom  we  bought  them  in  Savannah 
told  me  to  kill  flies  occasionally  and  give  them 
to  the  birds  as  tit-bits,  and  they  would  soon 
learn  to  love  me  and  to  welcome  my  approach 
to  their  cage.  But  at  the  outset  I  discover 
that  I  don't  like  to  kill  flies.  I  recoil  at  the 
necessity  of  winning  the  affection  of  the  birds 
by  assuming  the  role  of  fly-assassin.  I  am  such 
a  great,  powerful  monster  beside  this  curious 
little  hop-o'-ty-skip  which  runs  familiarly  along 
my  page  as  I  write,  that  it  seems  not  only  cruel 
but  cowardly  in  me  to  deliberately  smash  it, 
and  make  mourning  in  its  family,  when  it  is  not 
doing  me  the  least  harm.  And  here  is  my  new 
idea  :  Is  it  not  possible  that  we  mortals  may  be 
the  poor  insects  scampering  about  in  a  seem- 
ingly— often  really — idiotic  manner — building 
our  little  monuments,  as  ants  do  their  hills,  only 
to  be  kicked  over  by  thoughtless  boys  ;  that 
we  are  the  insignificant  hop-o'-ty-skips  running 
along  the  printed  page  of  some  mighty  Jove 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !         279 

or  Jupiter  who  deliberately  smashes  us  and 
winds  up  our  career  forever  ?  This  idea  I  had 
thought  quite  new — really  original — and  had 
intended  to  elaborate  it  some  day  in  print  in 
a  humorous  fashion ;  when  husband  informed 
me  that  it  was  as  old  as  the  hills. 
^"  Old  ?  "  I  gasped,  amazed. 

"  Why,  certainly !  the  Chinese  discovered  it 
fifteen  hundred  centuries  before  Christ.  Con- 
fucius set  it  to  music  and  Solomon 

"  Oh,  do  stop,  Mister  Teaze  !  " 

"Well  then,  behold!  look  here  in  Shake- 
speare : — 

"  '  As  flies  to  wanton  boys,  so  we  to  the  gods ; 

They  kill  us  for  their  sport.'  KING  LEAR." 

— So  now  I  am  more  than  ever  convinced  that 
Solomon  was  right ;  and  that  the  truth  will 
bear  infinite  repetition.  It  is  only  error  that 
grows  stale,  flat,  and  unprofitable  with  repeated 
utterance. 

It  is  a'  good  thing  to  speak  the  truth  once. ; 
it.isjDetter  to  speak  it  twice  ;  and  it  is  best  to 
speak  it  all  the  time.  Repetition  is  only  an- 
other name  for  agitation,  and  if  you  mean  to  do 
any  good  in  this  world  you  must  persistently 
hammer  away. 


280          Get  Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 


XXXIII. 

I  REMEMBER  when  I  was  a  child  that  I  often 
wondered  if  all  the  birds  had  nests.  As  if  there 
could  be  any  difficulty  about  building  a  nest, 
with  all  the  countless  trees  in  the  forest  ready 
to  build  in  !  Yet,  who  knows  what  conditions 
of  ornithclogical  social  life  may  trammel  and 
regulate  the  free  action  of  birds  ?  There  are 
not  more  trees  in  the  forests  than  there  are 
twenty-by-one-hundred-foot  building  lots  on 
the  face  of  the  great  globe.  Yet  not  every 
man  has  a  nest.  You  would  think,  with  the 
great  globe  to  choose  from,  that  every  man 
would  build  him  a  home.  The  materials  for 
his  house  are  as  profuse  at  hand  as  those  which 
go  to  building  the  birds'  nests,  are  they  not  ? 
Only  labor  is  required  ;  and  that  the  bird  gives. 
Why  not  man  ?  Especially  when  the  term  of 
deepest  pity,  the  profoundest  word-symbol  of 
an  abject,  pitiable,  and  unfriended  condition  is 
— "  homeless  !  " 

So  great  an  influence  is  wielded  by  the  home- 
life,  so  intimately  are  love  for  individuals  and 


Get  Thee  behind  Me,  Satan!         281 

love  of  home  blended,  that  I  am  almost  con- 
vinced a  law  should  be  passed,  that  none  should 
\  marry  except  on  condition  that  they^v?  at  once 
into  a  home  of  their  oivn.  Not  a  room,  nor  a 
suite  of  rooms,  in  a  hotel  or  boarding-house,  but 
a  Home  —  a  spot  of  earth  sacred  to  the  house- 
hold gods,  and  over  whose  threshold  none  may 
pass  but  by  the  permission  of  the  man  and  wife 
who  dwell  together  therein. 

For  there  is  so  much  that  is  softening  and 
soothing — so  much  that  is  peaceful,  reposeful, 
restful  in  the  bare  idea  of  a  nook  which  you 
independently  inhabit,  that  the  ruggedest  nature 
cannot  but  feel  it.  The  fiercest  barbarian  that 
ever  roamed  the  woods  is  more  mild,  more  peace- 
able in  his  hut-home.  Turn  from  his  comfort- 
able, cheerful  home  the  gentlest  man  you  know — 
force  him  to  beat  about  the  four  corners  of  the 
city,  now  lying  in  this  strange  bed,  now  eating 
at  that  uncongenial  board,  his  lares  and  penates 
scattered,  his  familiar  surroundings  vanished,: 
and  in  a  little  time  you  will  not  be  able  to 
recognize  your  once  amiable  man  in  this  soured, 
petulant,  distressed  creature  who  has  been  so 
unfortunate  as  to  lose  his  home. 


282  Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  / 

Hammering  away  in  a  moral  smithy,  I  find 

that  sometimes  the  sparks  fly.     But  the  faithful 

.  workman  does  not  quit  his  work,  if  perchance  a 

I  spark  should  light  upon  his   bared   arm,    and 

sting.       He  rubs  the  spot  a  moment  perhaps, 

but  he  goes  on  hammering  presently. 

I  have  been  stung  on  occasion,  but  I  have  not 
on  that  account  struck  any  the  less  cordially  the 
moment  after. 

It  ha*s  been  my  plan,  since  I  became  in  some 
sense  a  worker  for  reform,  to  note  carefully  and 
respectfully  all  criticisms  on  me  and  my  work, 
and  to  reply  to  them,  directly  or  indirectly,  as 
occasion  would  allow.  As  I  do  not  swing  a 
wooden  sword  myself,  so  I  like  to  see  the  weap- 
ons of  others  sharp  and  keen,  even  though  they 
cut  me  sometimes  cruelly.  And  the  keener 
they  are,  the  truer  my  respect  for  an  honorable 
antagonist. 

My  critics  have  been  numerous  and  active  ; 
they  have  given  me  abundant  cause  to  defend 
myself;  and  in  defending  myself  I  try  to  hit  as 
hard  as  they — but  I  respect  their  activity,  en- 
ergy, and  skill  even  while  I  strike — when  they 
are  honorable  opponents. 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  /          283 

There  is  a  paper  still  feebly  published  in  this 
city,  which  assiduously  occupied  itself  for  sev- 
eral months  in  trying  to  attract  my  attention, 
by  belching  forth  column  after  column  of  the 
vilest  calumny  at  me.  Many  friends  wondered 
why  I  did  not  reply  to  it.  Here  and  now  I  will 
tell  you  why  :  Not  because  its  arguments  were 
unanswerable  ;  far  from  it ;  they  were  weaker 
than  water — but  because  in  its  anxiety  to  goad 
me  into  replying,  it  descended  to  falsehood,  to 
scurrility,  to  indecent  disregard  of  the  code  of 
gentility  which  should  be  the  guide-manual  of 
editors  and  gentlemen.  Taking  one  of  my  ar- 
ticles on  theatrical  indecency  for  a  pretended 
theme  of  criticism,  it  left  criticism  idle  to  vilify 
me  personally,  to  charge  me  with  base  motives, 
and,  instead  of  endeavoring  to  pick  my  argu- 
ment to  pieces,  trying  to  find  somewhere  in  my 
Past  a  proof  that  I  was  a  hypocrite  now.  The 
imbecility  of  this  course  in  a  professedly  critical 
journal  was  so  idiotic,  that  had  it  been  merely 
idiotic  I  should  have  laughed  at  it,  and  given  it 
a  good-natured,  though  contemptuous  whack 
over  the  shoulders  with  my  sword.  But  there 
is  sometimes  linked  to  idiocy  a  species  of  dia- 


284          Get   TJiee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

bolic  cunning — a  treacherous,  fiendish,  horrible 
cruelty  of  intention — which  manifests  itself  in 
the  most  disgusting  and  frightful  wickedness. 
In  the  instance  I  am  considering,  idiocy  of  criti- 
cal purpose  passed  thus  into  the  diabolism  which 
has  no  hesitation  as  to  its  means,  so  that  it  may 
accomplish  its  ends,  and — as  with  the  idiocy  of 
the  asylums — in  its  eagerness  to  wreak  its  will, 
is  heedless  of  the  injury  it  inflicts  upon  itself. 

Seeing  this,  I  put  up  my  sword  at  once.  I 
would  not  lower  myself  so  far  as  to  do  battle 
with  such  an  antagonist. 

It  was  evident  that  this  paper  believed  it  could 
goad  me  into  a  reply  or  into  the  institution  of  a 
libel  suit,  and  that  this  would  attract  attention 
to  it,  and  advertise  it.  This  is  an  old  game 
with  the  publishers  of  unprofitable  newspapers, 
and  it  has  often  been  a  successful  one  ;  but  it  is 
too  transparent  ever  to  deceive  me.  My  lips 
were  at  once  sealed  ;  and  so  far  as  mentioning 
the  name  of  this  journal  is  concerned,  they  are 
sealed  forever.  I  resolved  that  not  one  line  of 
advertising  should  I  ever  give  it,  though  it 
charged  me  and  all  my  family,  and  every  one  of 
my  friends,  with  every  crime  known  to  the 
calendar. 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          285 

The  old  gentleman  in  the  fire-red  tights,  and 

the     red    isinglass    eyelids — he    who    is    ever 

finding  some  mischief  still  for  idle  hands  to  do — 

is  never  so  well  pleased  as  when  he  gets  hold  of 

one  of  those  writers  for  the  press  whose  delight 

\  it  is  to  rake  over  the  dead  leaves  of  the  Past  in 

^search  of  buried  misdeeds. 

It  is  a  part  of  the  duty  of  a  newspaper,  we  must 
admit,  to  take  cognizance  in  its  columns  of  pass- 
ing events,  and  if  crimes  are  perpetrated,  or 
wrongs  done,  to  give  an  account  of  them  as 
matters  of  news,  and  perhaps  comment  upon 
them  editorially  also. 

Thus,  if  you  should  go  out  some  fine  day  and 
pick  somebody's  pocket  it  would  be  quite  right 
that  all  the  newspapers  should  chronicle  your 
offense  ;  nor  could  you  complain  if  the  editors 
should  point  out  to  their  readers  the  wickedness 
of  pocket-picking  as  illustrated  by  you. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  if  you  had  picked  a 
pocket  ten  years  ago,  and  borne  the  conse- 
quences of  your  offense  at  the  time — and  since 
then  had  lived  a  correct  life,  a  life  utterly  void 
of  offense,  or,  still  better,  a  life  of  charity  and 
usefulness,  it  would  then  indeed  be  most  cruel 


286          Get   T/tee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

and  wicked  for  any  newspaper  of  to-day  to  en- 
tertain its  readers  with  an  account  of  your  old 
offense,  so  as  to  give  you  pain  now  and  per- 
haps interfere  with  your  present  usefulness. 

The  marf  who  repents — and  who  follows  up  \ 
repentance  with  good  works,  with  a  life  of  hon- 
orable effort — this  man  before  all  others  is  worthy 
of  our  sympathy.     We  have  the  testimony  of    ; 
the  Bible  that  such  men  are  the  best  beloved  of 
Heaven,  and  that  there  is  more  joy  in  heaven/ 
over  one  sinner  that  repents,  than  over  many 
who  have  never  gone  astray. 

There  is  an  Italian  proverb  which  says  :  "  If  * 
the  faults  of  the  best  and  purest  of  men  were 
written  on  his  forehead,  he  would  pull  his  cap  / 
over  his  eyes." 

I  suppose  there  is  no  exception  to  this  rule 
— not  one — and  has  never  been  since  Christ 
lived. 

The  person  who  rakes  up  some  forgotten 
peccadillo  of  yours — :even  some  expiated  and 
buried  crime — to  injure  your  influence  for  the 
right  and  true,  which  you  are  laboring  earnestly 
to  manifest  in  the  present,  is  guilty  of  a  heinous 
offense.  He  is  laboring  in  the  service  of  Satan  ; 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  /          287 

his   work   is   that   of  a  Scavenger ;    and  he-  is 
without  excuse  in  any  honorable  soul. 

If  a  man — or  let  us  say  a  woman — had 
violated  every  commandment  in  the  decalogue 
— if  she  had  been  a  drunkard  and  a  thief,  a  liar, 
a  slanderer,  and — well  yes,  even  a  free-lover — I 
say  that  the  farther  in  the  past  she  leaves  these 
offenses,  the  more  worthy  she  is  of  the  good- 
will of  all  true  Christian  men  and  women  ;  and 
the  man  or  journal  which  seeks  to  revive  the 
unhappy  Past  that  it  may  darken  the  Present,  J 
is  a  graver  offender  than  his  victim  ever  was. 

But  if  this  be  so,  by  what  terms  shall  I  char- 
acterize the  fiendishness  of  the  editor  who  in 
his  anger  at  the  worthy  Robinson  should  go 
prowling  into  the  Past,  trying  to  discover  if  in 
some  forgotten  grave  there  lies  not  some  folly 
or  weakness  of  which  some  cherished  friend  of 
Robinson's,  or  some  member  of  Robinson's 
family,  has  been  guilty,  and  coloring  the  simplest 
incidents  with  the  hues  of  Hades,  dangles  them 
in  Robinson's  face  with  an  air  of  saying,  "  Do 
you  see  that,  sir  ?  We  fling  this  in  your  face  ! 
How  do  you  like  this  ?  What  have  you  to  say 
to  this  ?  Your  grandmother,  or  your  uncle,  or 


288           Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

your  second  cousin's  husband  did  this !  And 
what  have  you  to  say  now  ?  Answer  us  if  you 
can,  sir  !  Aha  !  Answer  us  if  you  can  ! " 

And  a  skinny  Mephistopheles  rubs  his  hands 
and  chuckles  in  the  background. 

I  have  refused  to  look  in  the  Past  of  even 
Mrs.  Freelove  in  search  of  her  record.  Her  re- 
cord may  be  what  it  may — I  hold  that  her  pre- 
sent position  before  the  public  is  all  the  public 
has  to  deal  with. 


I  lectured  last  winter  at  a  certain  pretty 
village  in  New  York  State,  and  took  occasion  in 
-  the  course  of  my  remarks  to  pay  my  attentions 
to  the  Satan  of  free-love  in  the  phrase  which 
forms  the  title  of  this  book.  The  next  day  on 
the  cars  there  glided  up  to  me  a  youngish  sort 
of  man,  dressed  in  threadbare  black,  without 
gloves  on  his  bony  hands,  with  a  sandy  and 
befreckled  complexion,  and  great  round  staring 
eyes,  whose  color  seemed  to  match  his  com- 
plexion so  perfectly  that  they  may  have  been 
red  too,  for  all  impression  they  made  to  the 
contrary.  At  any  rate,  they  were  unsheltered 
by  any  visible  eyelash,  and  unadorned  by  any 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          289 

visible  eyebrow  ;  and  looking  at  them  you 
wondered  if  such  eyes  were  not  painful  to  carry 
about  in  their  wide  and  blank  openness. 

As  I  turned  from  the  window  I  found  this 
seedy  and  creeping  man  standing  by  my  side. 
He  asked  me  if  I  were  I.  And  I  answered. 
"Ay."  Without  further  parley  he  seated  him- 
self by  my  side.  My  olfactories  are  very 
delicate,  and  he  was  musty  as  well  as  shabby 
and  red. 

"I  was  at — "  and  his  voice  was  quavering 
and  high  and  shrill — "  your  lecter  last  evenin'. 
I  am  just  startin'  on  a  lecter  tower  myself." 

In  reporting  this  man's  conversation  I  do  not 
exaggerate,  as  a  fictionist  might,  for  the  purpose 
of  heightening  the  effect  of  the  picture. 

The  man  was  a  complete  surprise  to  me. 
Malapropisms  are  common  on  the  stage  and  in 
books,  but  this  was,  I  think,  the  only  person  I 
ever  met  who  audaciously  used  certain  words 
which  are  a  little  out  of  the  common,  and 
pronounced  them  in  the  most  outrageously 
grotesque  manner. 

"Yes,"  he  continued,  giving  me  the  benefit 
of  his  plans — and  if  there  is  anything  more  im- 


290          Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

pertinent  than  for  an  utter  stranger  to  sit  down 
/    uninvited  beside  you  when  there  is   plenty   of 

__jx>om  elsewhere,  and  begin  to  talk  to  you  of  his 
projects  about  himself,  which  are  not  of  the 

I    slightest  interest  to  you,  I  know  not  what  it  is. 

\"  I  am  startin'  on  my  fust  lecter  tower.  I  am 
goin'  to  speak  on  the  Cause." 

"  What  cause  ?"  I  asked,  with  a  mechanical 
politeness.  Those  years  I  passed  in  France 

j  have  ingrained  in  my  nature  a  certain  suavity 
of  manner  of  which  on  occasion  I  would  gladly 
be  rid  ;  and  which  showed  itself  for  a  few  min- 
utes during  this  interview  in  a  decently  cour- 
teous reception  of  an  insolent  and  offensive 
person. 

"  Why,  the  Cause  !  Woman  !  Seffrage  !  Oh, 
woman  is  a  slave !  She  is  bound !  She  shall  be 
free !  " 

I  shrunk  from  the  person  as  far  as  the  seat 
would  permit,  so  sincere  was  the  disgust  with 
which  the  slimy  creature  inspired  me. 

"Yes,    I'm    goin'     inter     Cernecticut ter 

Bridgeport ;  thar  I  shall  meet  the  Reverund 
Miss  Atlas  Smith.  JDo  you  know  Reverund 
Atlas  Smith?" 


Get   TJiee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          291 

I  did  not.  I  was  looking  out  of  the  window. 
He  addressed  me  again. 

"  This  will  be  my  deebutt  as  alecterer." 

I  turned  and  stared  at  this  worm.  Excuse 
me,  worms ;  the  simile  is  degrading  to  you,  but 
our  language  is  faulty  in  some  respects,  and  a 
linguistic  peculiarity  alone  the  cause  of  this  in- 
sult which  likens  a  most  offensive  and  immoral 
creature  to  a  harmless  and  inoffensive  little  thing 
like  yourselves. 

"  I  hev  an  exception  to  take  to  your  lecter,'M 
said  the  worm,  rubbing  his  knuckly  hand  on  his 
hard,  rasping  chin,  through  the  skin  of  which  a 
stubble  of  red  beard  was  trying  to  push  its  way. 
"  You  objected  to  the  ductrines  of  Sister  Free-  j 
love  ! " 

I  began  to  feel  a  dawning  sense  of  relief.  He 
went  on. 

"The  ductrines  of' Sister  Freelove  I  know  is 
not  pop'ler — people  is  agin  'em  ginerally.  I 
em  a  lawyer  here  in  our  town,  and  represunta- 
tions  was  made  to  me  which — which  in  fact  in- 
dooced  me  to  espouse  the  cause  of  Sister  Free- 
love — and  I  felt  called  on  to  pernounce  my  pro- 
test agin  the  views  you  took  in  your  lecter  last 
night." 


292  Get    Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

"  You  are  too  kind,  sir.  I  am  deeply  obliged 
to  you.  It  is  a  pleasure,  sir,  to  receive  your 
protest." 

"  Be  keerful !  "  said  he,  and  his  red  face  grew 
redder,  and  his  hair  grew  stiffer,  and  his  bony 
hand  scraped  his  bony  chin  more  nervously 
than  before  ;  "  thar  will  be  a  day  of  reckonin' 
fer  them  who  set  theirselves  up  agin  Sister 
Freelove.  She  has  got  the  most  extrawd'nary 
mind  of  any  woman  livin',  and  she  is  agoin' 
to  occupy  a  powerful  pusition  and  she  will 
remember  her  friends.  So  we  air  bound  to 
rally  round  her.  She  is  abreakin'  the  way  fer 
future  generations.  Them  thet  is  not  with  us 
is  aginst  us,  and  we  shell  use  the  weepins  of 
defense.  You  will  hev  to  change  your  tone 
if  you  expect  to  escape.  We  shell  not  allow 
ourselves  to  be  calumerniated  with  impunity, 
mam.  I  hev  heerd  all  the  lecters  that  hes 
been  given  in  our  town  this  winter,  but  none, 
no  none,  hes  aroused  my  anermosity  ekal  to 
yourn." 

"Then  for  once,"  I  said  to  him  with  a  flush 
of  real  delight,  "  I  am  satisfied  with  myself. 
I  glow  with  pleasure  to  think  that  I  have  done 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !          293 

something  that  calls  for  the  disapprobation  of 
the  low,  the  vile,  the  degraded,  the  creatures 
who  make  a  boast  of  their  shame.  How  could 
I  look  myself  in  the  face  in  the  glass  to-night 
if  I  had  done  something  to  merit  the  ap- 
proval of  those  who  hold  your  doctrines  !  You 
have  given  me  a  moment  of  sincere  pleas- 
ure, Mr.  Freelover,  and  I  know  of  nothing 
now  you  can  do  to  add  to  my  comfort  except 
to  change  your  seat." 

His  face  had  reached  such  a  climax  of  red- 
ness that  it  was  one  Glare.  Mephistopheles 
always  affects  red.  He  Got  him  Behind  me, 
and  left  me  at  peace  with  myself  and  all  the 
world. 


XXXIV. 

SOMETIMES  when  I  look  back  over  the  manu- 
script leaves  of  this  book  I  am  tempted  to 
destroy  it.  Why  ?  Why,  because  it  would  cut 
me  to  the  heart  if  any  reader  should  so  miscon- 
strue the  spirit  of  this  unpretentious  volume  as 
to  believe  that  I  had  therein  set  myself  up — or  > 


294          Get   Thee  bcJiind  Me,  Satan  ! 

set  any  of  the  sitters  at  our  Table  or  the  Table 
itself  up — as  model  characters.  There  is  not  a 
home  in  the  land  where  happiness  may  not 
come  and  live  as  it  lives  in  our  home,  if  the 
occupants  of  that  home  will  invite  it,  woo  it,  as 
we  have  done.  There  are  homes  far  richer  ; 
whose  attractions  to  the  aesthetic  sense  are  much 
more  powerful  than  ours  ;  where  glorious  picture 
galleries  delight  the  eye  of  their  owners  ;  where 
superb  statuary  stirs  their  pulses  to  admiration 
of  its  grace  ;  where  leafy  parks  call  them  to 
poetic  strolling ;  where  blooming  flowers  of 
tropic  climes  flame  their  gorgeous  hues  and 
shame  even  that  chef  d'ceuvre  of  your  celebrated 
painter  for  which  a  fortune  has  just  been  paid. 
Our  home  would  joy  to  have  these  things  ;  but 
not  having  them,  it  can  have  that  which  these 
alone  will  fail  to  bring — and  so  can  yours, 
reader,  though  your  home  be  poorer  still  than 
ours. 

If  I  have  spoken  lovingly  of  our  dear  ones — 
of  our  Rebecca,  our  Algie,  our  beloved  W. — it 
is  not  because  they  have  no  faults  to  the  eye 
which  chooses  to  see  faults,  I  suppose  ;  but  the 
eye  of  love  does  not  so  choose,  and  should 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  /          295 

not.  Rebecca  I  maintain  is  one  of  the  dearest 
women  ever  sent  on  earth  to  bless  all  those 
with  whom  she  comes  in  contact ;  yet,  I  grieve 
to  say,  Rebecca  is  frequently  reminded  by  a 
pain  there,  that  she  has  a  back.  This  you 
know  is  far  from  being  the  ideal  woman  we  fain 
would  have  ;  and  Rebecca  says  the  next  time 
she  comes  into  the  world  she'll  take  my  advice 
and  go  romp  in  the  woods  and  jump  off  the 
barn  and  drive  her  father's  cow  home  (the 
things  W.  did,  she  says),  so  that  she'll  be  good 
and  strong.  Our  Algie  is  the  noble  little  fellow 
I  have  tried  to  picture  him  ;  a  muscular,  sym- 
metrical juvenile  gladiator,  who  is  as  strong  as 
a  young  lion,  and  as  gentle  as  a  lamb.  Affec- 
tionate, incapable  of  falsehood,  hating  what  is 
wicked,  adoring  what  is  right,  truly  imbued 
with  a  beautiful  religious  spirit,  he  at  the  same 
time  freely  acknowledges  that  fun  "suits  him," 
and  is  so  far  removed  from  the  wonderful  young 
prig  who  is  a  model  of  all  the  virtues,  social, 
religious,  and  scholastic,  that  it  frequently  has 
to  be  urged  upon  his  attention  that  his  heels, 
seen  from  an  upper  window  as  he  throws  somer- 
saults over  the  area  railings,  are  not  pleasing 


296           Get   Thee  behind  Me,   Satan  ! 

to  the  eye  of  taste ;  and  that  in  preparing  his 
linen  for  the  wash  the  introduction  of  two  1's 
in  the  word  "collars"  would  elucidate  his 
meaning  to  the  laundress.  And  our  W.t — 
what  of  him  ?  No,  no — not  a  word — not  a 
breath,  dear  friends — he  is  faultless  ! 

The  true  and  only  miscreant  is  I.  I  have 
already  alluded  to  the  Vesuvian  character  of 
my  temper.  Sarah  Hoggins  episodes  en- 
rage me,  while  all  the  rest  of  our  folks  are  as 
smooth  and  unruffled  as  a  placid  stream.  I 
am  trying  to  improve  myself  in  this  regard. 
I  am  learning  brave  lessons  from  the  beautiful 
equable  characters  of  the  noble  people,  for 
placing  me  among  whom,  God  has  my  nightly 
thanks.  Luther  was  a  man  of  violent  temper, 
but  he  curbed  it.  Temper  is  hideous  in  a 
woman.  Every  day  I  make  these  mistakes 
and  I  repent  them  in  sackcloth  and  ashes. 
And  I  improve.  Trifles  have  no  longer  the 
power  to  chafe  me,  as  once  they  had  ;  but  never, 
I  think,  shall  I  succeed  in  vanquishing  that  hot 
rage  which  seizes  me  when  weak  and  wicked 
men  and  women  struggle  to  pollute  the  name 
of  blessed  Love,  and  kill  the  gentle  household 
gods,  which  poor  humanity  so  ill  can  spare. 


Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  !  297 

Then  do  I  thank  God  I  have  a  voice  which 
thousands  upon  thousands  of  people  hear,  every 
year.  Then  do  I  rejoice  that,  woman  as  I  am, 
I  load  no  Quaker-gun  when  I  put  pen  to 
paper. 

Sometimes  those  who  love  me  remonstrate 
with  me  for  spending  my  strength  in  fighting 
windmills.  Is  this  Freelove  monster  but  a  wind- 
mill ?  Am  I  fighting  nothing  ?  Pray  God  it 
may  be  so.  If  it  be,  then  many  people  of 
sound  judgment  are  mistaken. 

Our  usually  cool  Rebecca  is  greatly  agitated 
by  it.  "Are  not  girls  frivolous  enough,  irre- 
sponsible, unthinking  enough  now  ?  Shall  they 
be  urged  to  more  weakness — more  wickedness  ? 
Hitherto  they  have  been  pure  at  least — if  no 
more." 

Even  sage  W.  shakes  his  head.  "  Bad  teach- 
ings for  the  warm  blood  of  our  Algie — at  this 
moment  when  he  is  about  to  enter  manhood 
with  all  its  temptations." 

And  just  as  we  are  talking,  Algie  runs  in, 
screaming  with  laughter,  and  holding  a  copy  of 
an  illustrated  paper  in  his  hand. 

"  What's  the  matter,  Algie  ?  " 


298           Get   Thee  behind  Me,  Satan  ! 

"  Why  look  here,"  he  says,  "  here's  a  picture 
of  that  nasty  old  Mrs.  Freelove,  and  the  artist 
has  printed  under  it — 

"  '  GET  THEE  BEHIND  ME  (MRS.)  SATAN  .! '  " 


THE  END. 


THE  GREAT  BOOK  SUCCESS  OF  THE  YEAR! 


THE  ABOMINATIONS  OF  MODERN  SOCIETY 

By  T.  DEWITT  TALMAGE. 

Characterized  by  all  its  noted  author' s  power,  eloquence,  and  fear- 
lessness, this  volume  has  produced  great  results, — first,  in  eliciting 
extiaordinary  attention  from  the  Press;  and  second,  in  arousing  and 
alarming  the  young  men  and  young  women  of  this  country  to  the 
subtle  influences  which  are  literally  undermining  persons  and  society. 
Its  scope  and  general  character  may  be  inferred  from  its  chapter 
contents,  viz. : 

"The  Curtain  Lifted  (The  Great  City  as  it  is);  "Winter  Nights  ;"  "'Hie 
Power  of  Clothes  ;"  "  After  Midnight,"  (or,  Scenes  within  and  without);  "The 
Indiscriminate  Dance,:>  (Sociables,  Public  Kails,  &c.);  "The  Massacre  by 
Needle  and  Sewing  Machine,"  (All  about  Shop-Girls,  Sewing  Women,  &c.); 
"  Pictures  in  the  Stock  Gallery,"  (or,  How  Stock-Gamblers  Gamble);  "  Leprous 
Newspapers;"  "The  Fatal  Ten  Strike  ;"  "Lies — White  and  Black,"  (Com- 
mercial and  Social  Falsehood);  "  Some  of  the  Club-Rooms  ;"  "Flask,  Bottle, 
and  Demijohn  ;"  "The  Gun  that  Kicks  over  the  Man  Who  Shoots  it  Off," 
(Blasphemy);  "  The  House  of  Blackness  of  Darkness,"  (the  "Social  Evil"); 
"  The  Good  Time  Coming." 

This  notable  book  has  passed  through  more  rapid  editions  than 
any  volume  issued  for  a  long  tune,  and  it  bids  fair  to  be  classed  with 
those  works  which  stand  out  in  the  Trade  as  milestones  on  the  high- 
way of  American  Literature. 

Published  in  one  beautiful  volume,  izmo  in  size.  It  is  sold  by 
booksellers  and  newsvenders  generally,  or  is  sent  postpaid  to  any 
address  on  receipt  of  price,  viz.  :  $1.50.  Address 

ADAMS,  VICTOR  &  CO.,  Publishers, 

96  William  Street,  New  York. 


NOTICES  OF  THE  LEADING  PRESS. 


"  It  is  conscientious  and  clear  in  its  discriminations,  and  remorse- 
less in  its  slaughter  of  shams.  It  recites  its  wrongs  so  literally  and 
exhaustively  that  the  remedies  rush  out  unheralded.  *  *  It  is  a 
live  book,  sure  to  be  read  through,  and  as  certain  to  compel  action  in 
the  many  as  criticism  in  the  few." — Brooklyn  Daily  Eagle. 

"'The  House  of  Blackness  of  Darkness '  is  an  outspoken  and- 
terrible  denunciation,  calculated  to  arouse  wide  horror  of  its  insidious 
poisonings.  Other  vices  of  the  times,  'stock  gambling,'  'leprous 
newspapers,'  'white  and  black  lies,'  'intemperance,'  'the  massa- 
cre by  needle  and  sewing  machine,"  &c.,  &c.,  receive  telling  and 
resounding  blows  ;  but  there  are  quieter  words  about  '  The  Good 
Time  Coming '  as  well." — /Viw  York  Weekly  Trade  Circular. 


"  He  handles  without  gloves,  and  utterly  without  tear,  the  terrible 
wickednesses  of  our  great  city.  *  *  He  is  lurid  in  his  righteous 
wrath,  and  yet  he  seldom  fails  to  recognize  the  distinction  between 
use  and  abuse.  He  is  as  commendatory  of  the  recreating  dance  and 
the  principled  journal  as  he  is  denunciatory  of  indiscriminate  dancing 
and  impure  journalism." — N.  V.  Evening  'A  fail 

"As  warmly  praised  and  as  vehemently  denounced  as  any  volume 
which  has  recently  appeared.  *  *  The  purpose  of  the  work,  wo 
need  not  say,  is  the  very  best." — Ar.  K  Independent. 

"  We  have  read  this  new  book  with  feelings  we  can  hardly  descril>e. 
We  know  of  no  living  preacher  who  could  have  written  it  but  Hr. 
Talmage.  *  *  Oh,  it  is  a  book  to  make  all  good  men  and  women 
go  down  on  their  knees  and  cry  mightily  to  God  against  the  destroy- 
ers of  virtue,  peace,  and  life.  *  *  May  it  be  circulated  in  tens  of 
thousands  I  " — London  (Eng.}  Christian  Age,  (Spnrgeon  s  Paper.") 

' '  Let  it  be  circulated  !  for  it  is  as  much  demanded  in  San  Francisco 
as  in  New  York." — Christian  Advocate,  San  Francisco. 

"  All  the  shafts  aimed  at  vicious  customs  hit  the  mark  with  a  telling 
stroke.  *  *  Not  a  single  page  of  the  work  can  be  designated  as 
superfluous  or  tiresome." — Sf.  Louis  Republican. 

"  Dr.  Talmage  is  a  star  of  commanding  magnitude  and  lustre  in 
the  pulpit  of  the  North.  *  *  Those  who  wish  to  read  a  true  and 
thrilling  account  of  the  moral  character  and  condition  of  the  Metropo- 
lis of  America  will  do  well  to  read  this  'bold,  brave  book.'  "—Stm, 
Atlanta,  Ga. 

"  There  is  tremendous  nervous  enejgy  in  Mr.  Talmage's  sentences. 
They  startle  by  their  very  boldness.  He  does  not  know  how  to  soften 
a  denunciation  or  kid  glove  a  lie,  cheat,  snare,  or  sham." — Prm'i- 
dtnce  (R.  I.)  Press. 

"  Mr.  Talmage  wields  a  sharp  sword,  cuts  right  and  left,  and  asks 
no  questions  as  to  who  will  be  pleased  or  displeased.  He  is  a  fear- 
less antagonist  to  all  forms  of  corruption,  a  writer  who  cares  more 
for  cleaving  a  helmet  than  for  showing  the  jewels  on  the  hand  of  the 
weapon.  Blows  are  what  he  gives,  and  yet,  as  the  blade  goes  swiftly 
down,  the  jewels  frequently  flash  on  thfe  eye." — The  Interior,  Chicago. 

"  Glowing  with  impassioned  ferver  it  wages  a  deadly  war  against 
the  vices  of  the  day  in  their  most  enticing  forms." — M  Y.  Tribune. 

"  When  he  speaks,  thousands  listen  ;  when  he  writes,  hundreds  of 
thousands  read." — N.  Y.  Hearth  and  Home. 

"  His  pictures  are  real ;  and  yet  they  do  nothing  to  corrupt  the 
imagination.  We  have  read  with  some  care  those  chapters  which 
treat  most  nearly  on  dangerous  ground,  which,  in  the  hands  of 
another  artist,  might  awaken  solacious  imaginations  rather  tli;tn 
arouse  an  indignant  conscience  ;  and  we  do  not  hesitate  to  say  that 
the  man  who  would  find  in  Mr.  Talmage's  pictures  a  means  of  grati- 
fying a  lustful  imagination,  is  hopelessly  l>3il  indfffl."— A^.  V".  ///«r- 
trattd  Christian  Weekly. 


